4 For the word of a king is authority and power, and who can say to him, What are you doing?
5 Whoever observes the [king's] command will experience no harm, and a wise man's mind will know both when and what to do.
6 For every purpose and matter has its [right] time and judgment, although the misery and wickedness of man lies heavily upon him [who rebels against the king].
7 For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how and when it will be?
8 There is no man who has power over the spirit to retain the breath of life, neither has he power over the day of death; and there is no discharge in battle [against death], neither will wickedness deliver those who are its possessors and given to it.
9 All this have I seen while applying my mind to every work that is done under the sun. There is a time in which one man has power over another to his own hurt or to the other man's.
10 And so I saw the wicked buried–those who had come and gone out of the holy place [but did not thereby escape their doom], and they are [praised and] forgotten in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity (emptiness, falsity, vainglory, and futility)!