Ecclesiastes7:15

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Translation

In my vapor-like

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days I have seen everything: I have seen a righteous man who is put to death

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in his righteousness, and a wicked man whose life is prolonged in his wickedness.

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Paraphrase

During my life, which itself is like a vapor, I have seen all the extremes and everything in between. I have seen righteous people suffer violent deaths which they did not seem to deserve, and I have seen wicked people live long easy lives that they definitely did not deserve to live. Sometimes life seems backwards.

Footnotes

1

This is vapor-like because it is E: Not Easily understood and Endlessly frustrating.

2: “put to death”

“to die, be destroyed, be exterminated, or vanish.” From this list you can see that this usually involves violence; it is not a picture of someone dying of old age or dying in his sleep. Hence the paraphrase column renders it as “suffer a violent death.” This tends to send us the message that God is unjust.

3

This likewise tends to send us the message that God is unjust. That is not the intended message, but it is an admission that such things are hard to understand and are frustrating to us.