So be happy with your wife and find your joy with the woman you married---

pretty and graceful as a deer. Let her charms keep you happy; let her surround you with her love.

Find a wife and you find a good thing; it shows that the LORD is good to you.

A man can inherit a house and money from his parents, but only the LORD can give him a sensible wife.

Didn't God make you one body and spirit with her? What was his purpose in this? It was that you should have children who are truly God's people. So make sure that none of you breaks his promise to his wife.

How can anyone know what is best for us in this short, useless life of ours---a life that passes like a shadow? How can we know what will happen in the world after we die?

How short you have made my life! In your sight my lifetime seems nothing. Indeed every living being is no more than a puff of wind,

We are like a puff of wind; our days are like a passing shadow.

Anything I wanted, I got. I did not deny myself any pleasure. I was proud of everything I had worked for, and all this was my reward.

The best thing we can do is eat and drink and enjoy what we have earned. And yet, I realized that even this comes from God.

All of us should eat and drink and enjoy what we have worked for. It is God's gift.

So I realized then that the best thing we can do is enjoy what we have worked for. There is nothing else we can do. There is no way for us to know what will happen after we die.

Here is what I have found out: the best thing we can do is eat and drink and enjoy what we have worked for during the short life that God has given us; this is our fate.