11 He has made everything appropriate[a] in its time.(A) He has also put eternity in their hearts,[b] but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 3:11 Or beautiful
  2. 3:11 Or has put a sense of past and future into their minds, or has placed ignorance in their hearts

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time.(A) He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom(B) what God has done from beginning to end.(C)

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 3:11 Or also placed ignorance in the human heart, so that

25 I turned my thoughts to know, explore, and examine wisdom(A) and an explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness. 26 And I find more bitter than death(B) the woman who is a trap:(C) her heart a net and her hands chains. The one who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. 27 “Look,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation, 28 which my soul continually searches for but does not find: I found one person in a thousand, but none of those was a woman.(D) 29 Only see this: I have discovered that God made people upright,(E) but they pursued many schemes.”

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25 So I turned my mind to understand,
    to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things(A)
and to understand the stupidity of wickedness
    and the madness of folly.(B)

26 I find more bitter than death
    the woman who is a snare,(C)
whose heart is a trap
    and whose hands are chains.
The man who pleases God will escape her,
    but the sinner she will ensnare.(D)

27 “Look,” says the Teacher,[a](E) “this is what I have discovered:

“Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—
28     while I was still searching
    but not finding—
I found one upright man among a thousand,
    but not one upright woman(F) among them all.
29 This only have I found:
    God created mankind upright,
    but they have gone in search of many schemes.”

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 7:27 Or the leader of the assembly

Just as you don’t know the path of the wind,
or how bones develop in[a] the womb of a pregnant woman,
so also you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 11:5 Or know how the life-breath comes to the bones in

As you do not know the path of the wind,(A)
    or how the body is formed[a] in a mother’s womb,(B)
so you cannot understand the work of God,
    the Maker of all things.

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 11:5 Or know how life (or the spirit) / enters the body being formed