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Is Death Fair?

I ·thought about [L gave my heart to] all this and ·tried to understand it [L examined all this]. ·I saw that God controls good people and wise people and what they do [L The righteous and the wise and their works are all in the hand of God], but no one knows if ·they will experience love or hate [L love or hate awaits them].

·Good [Righteous] and ·bad [wicked] people ·end up the same [have the same fate]
those who are good and those who are evil,
    those who are clean [C in a ritual sense] and those who are unclean,
    those who sacrifice and those who do not.
The same things happen to a good person
    as happen to a sinner,
to a person who ·makes promises to God [swears; makes an oath]
    and to one who ·does not [L is afraid to swear/make an oath].

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A Common Destiny for All

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them.(A) All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad,[a] the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good,
    so with the sinful;
as it is with those who take oaths,
    so with those who are afraid to take them.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 9:2 Septuagint (Aquila), Vulgate and Syriac; Hebrew does not have and the bad.