| And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart. | A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. |
| For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up! | If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. |
| There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every matter under heaven. | For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. |
| One who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor one who loves abundance with its income. This too is futility. | Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness! |
| Do not say, “Why is it that the former days were better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this. | Don’t long for “the good old days.” This is not wise. |
| Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. | Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. |
| Just as you do not know the path of the wind, and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes everything. | Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things. |
| So remove sorrow from your heart and keep pain away from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting. | So refuse to worry, and keep your body healthy. But remember that youth, with a whole life before you, is meaningless. |
| He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, without the possibility that mankind will find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. | Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. |
| On the day of prosperity be happy, But on the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other So that a person will not discover anything that will come after him. | Enjoy prosperity while you can, but when hard times strike, realize that both come from God. Remember that nothing is certain in this life. |
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