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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Let’s solve the problem of evil > When Human life begins: in reality and legally | Forum Quick Jump
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 8/20/2003 2:30 PM (GMT -6) |   | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
quote:
Originally posted by DLW
When do these intutions develop, at what stage, typically?
All may have a relationship with God. All animals, all life have a relationship with God, but it isn't the same sort of relationship.
Dave, loks like your pragmatic agenda colored your reading. You were looking only at how the new human person actions towards God. What is far bigger is how God actions towards the new huan person. In that respect there is no "stage" to ask questions about.
God speaks. Done.
If God speaks through you then I'll have to differ with how God goes about communicating the message.
God spoke through the Bible. However, the leadings of the Holy Spirit have not teleologically-guided Church practice at all points in its history.
However, is this really worth going over again and again?
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Tigress
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 8/21/2003 5:00 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 8/26/2003 6:06 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by fred
quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
quote:
Originally posted by DLW
When do these intutions develop, at what stage, typically?
All may have a relationship with God. All animals, all life have a relationship with God, but it isn't the same sort of relationship.
Dave, loks like your pragmatic agenda colored your reading. You were looking only at how the new human person actions towards God. What is far bigger is how God actions towards the new human person. In that respect there is no "stage" to ask questions about.
God speaks. Done.
Humanity, and with it personhood is A CALLING. There are no stages in that ""called-ness."
That is a theo-centric definition of humanity,
Gee Pow, as with person-to-person contact raising one's voice or typing in bigger fonts and throwing in god-speak doesn't make one's arguments better.
personhood has stages, but the existence of ambiguity doesn't give us free license to abort fetuses when we want to. The importance of the sanctity of human life is too great. However, it is simply not accurate to say we know with certainty that human life begins at conception.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 8/26/2003 7:14 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by fred
All: Nothing remotely suggests that at and after conception God intends to turn that human person into anything else; nor cease with His realtionship with him/her. Your statement above, then, is nonesense! If YOU cannot be certain, then it is in your own head. Waht is concrete reality is clear, present, and alive.
Clearly, God permits a high fraction of blastocysts to not survive very long. God did not intend them to become human persons.
The fact that they cannot become other than a human person does not imply that from the point of conception they are a human person.
Your argument rests on a relationship God has with the blastocyst from second one. This does not qualify as a concrete reality.
quote:
BTW - I think it is devisive of you to suggest that I was "raising my voice." I had one simple point to post -- one you repeatedly ignored. So, I made a sign board for anyone else to read. You are free to read it too if you wish--but it was not just for you.
Forgive me then, I had adopted the convention of viewing larger font postings as equivalent to us raising our voices.
The point you make cannot be refuted. Just as the creationist point that God created the light we perceive from other stars in transit 4,000 or 5,000 years ago cannot be refuted.
However, I believe that such beliefs should be considered non-essential for Christians.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 8/26/2003 10:14 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by DLW
You are appealing to mystery.
I am appealing to facts.
Discussion?
I'm posting a reminder that faith is lived in obedience, not in thought-games. What matters is not what I "think" (or discuss) about those who God creates, but my communion in love with and toward them. Further, my communion in love with God through them.
I do not care to try to "break it down."
That is why my post became shorter and more to the central point.
quote:
Humanity, and with it personhood is A CALLING.
quote:
God speaks that person into relationship.
What matters is faithful obedience. Awe.
God creates. I worship God "through matter." (St. John of Damascus)
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/3/2003 8:20 AM (GMT -6) | | 'I Expect A Great Reward'
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Catharine Skipp
MIAMI, Sept. 2 -- Paul Hill never left any doubt about his feelings on the subject of killing abortion doctors. He was all for it.
"Justifiable homicide" to protect unborn children, he called it. He made his case so often, on television talk shows and in newspaper interviews, that he became one of the leading voices in support of Michael Griffin, the chemical plant worker who committed the nation's first abortion clinic murder in Pensacola, Fla., in 1993.
Three months after Griffin's life sentence for murder in 1994, Hill went from commentator to killer. He fired a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun into a pickup truck outside the Ladies Clinic in Pensacola, killing physician John B. Britton, 69, and security escort James H. Barrett, 74.
Hill, now 49 and so unrepentant that he said today he would kill again, is scheduled to die by injection Wednesday evening for the double murder. Barring a stay, he will be the first person in U.S. history to be put to death for killing an abortion provider.
Hill's planned execution at the Florida State Prison in Starke is drawing new attention to the extremist groups that advocate violence to stop abortions and is sending pulses of anxiety through the nation's 450 abortion clinics. Extra security precautions were being put in place at clinics today in anticipation of a possible backlash from some radical antiabortion activists inspired by Hill who has been labeled a martyr and "a true American hero" on Web sites run by groups such as the militant Army of God. Hill -- a man whose inflammatory rhetoric filled the airwaves in the mid-1990s -- is going out talking. He conducted a group interview today on the eve of his execution, smiling and appearing composed in footage of the hour-long session at the northern Florida prison.
"I expect a great reward in heaven," Hill said. "I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse. . . . People have asked me if I would do it again; if I was put in a similar circumstance, I believe I would act similarly."
Hill's hair is a bit thinner than it was when he was making the rounds of television shows, such as the Phil Donahue show, where he compared abortion doctors to Adolf Hitler and accused women who have abortions of being "accessories to murder." But his smile was there, just the same as always, an expression that has unnerved many who learned what Hill had done and how he felt about it.
Hill, an airplane pilot's son and former Presbyterian minister who grew up in the upscale Miami suburb of Coral Gables, is facing a death that he has done little to prevent. He refused to make an opening statement while representing himself during a murder trial in late 1994. After his conviction, he blocked attempts by attorneys to file motions challenging his death sentence.
His dogged refusal, despite numerous opportunities, to express remorse has made him a hero to the most extreme elements of the antiabortion fight. He is celebrated on Web sites and praised effusively.
The Rev. Don Spitz, who is organizing a vigil for Hill outside the prison Wednesday, drove to Pensacola in 1994 after hearing about the abortion clinic shooting to meet Hill and has been his spiritual adviser since. In the days after the shooting, Spitz said, Hill was contented, at peace.
"He had joy because he obeyed God," Spitz said.
Hill's claim that God told him to kill Britton and his continued advocacy of violence have divided the country's antiabortion movement. Some of the nation's most prominent antiabortion leaders have condemned him.
"Christ did not come to save us with a Molotov cocktail in one hand and a dagger between his teeth; he came to lay his life down so that others might live," said Flip Benham, national director of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue. "What Paul Hill did was directly the opposite."
Seven people, including three abortion doctors, have been killed in attacks aimed at abortion clinics and their workers since 1993, according to the National Abortion Federation, a Washington-based group that represents clinics that conduct about half of the 1.2 million abortions performed nationally each year. Only Hill has been sentenced to death, while other killers have received life sentences. One suspect, the fugitive Eric Robert Rudolph, who was captured earlier this year, is awaiting a trial in a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic bombing that killed a police officer.
Vicki Saporta, the group's director, calls the attackers "terrorists."
"They've proven they'll stop at nothing," Saporta said today.
The last fatal attack was nearly five years ago, when Barnett Slepian was shot to death inside his home in Amherst, N.Y., in front of his wife and children, by a sniper who fired through his kitchen window. Saporta and others worry that this period of relative calm will be broken by the double impact of Hill's scheduled execution and the 25-years-to-life sentence handed down in May for Slepian's killer, James C. Kopp.
"We're very concerned that this fall will bring the attempted assassination of an abortion provider," Saporta said.
Threatening letters, each containing a single rifle bullet, were sent recently to four state officials in Florida, including the judge who sentenced Hill and Gov. Jeb Bush (R). Bush told reporters today that he will not "be bullied" by such tactics.
While there is an air of nervousness at many clinics as the execution approaches, Hill appeared placid and composed today, wearing his orange prison jumpsuit and preparing to eat his last meal. He asked Spitz to bring just one thing when he arrives for a final prayer Wednesday: a New American Standard Bible.
Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
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Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/16/2003 5:45 AM (GMT -6) | |
Barbara Newman
From Postmodern Patriarchy Loves Abortion (1993)
also see Newman's Abortion and War: Euphemism Kills at the Feminists for
Life site
The leaders of organized American feminism have unfortunately defined
"reproductive rights" as the fundamental issue of equality. But although NOW
and NARAL maintain that abortion is liberating, they have failed to persuade
the majority of American women, and for good reason. For abortion is in
reality the fruit of a patriarchal system that is still unable to accept
either the human dignity or the mature sexuality of women.
The appealing rhetoric of "choice" proves, on closer examination, to conceal
a dangerous double bind. Abortion advocates cite a woman's "right to
privacy," claiming that no parent or boyfriend or husband--much less the
state--has the right to intervene in her private reproductive decisions. Yet
this logic implies that if abortion is a woman's "private choice," then so
is child rearing. The woman who seeks to raise a child despite economic
hardship is frequently abandoned by her children's father and finds little
help from society. Since she refused the easy choice of abortion, she alone
must bear the burden of her difficult and courageous choice. Thus
privatizing the sphere of reproduction leaves women, especially poor women,
more vulnerable to exploitation than before. Many young mothers seek
abortions precisely because they feel that they have no "choice"--a feeling
of powerlessness, not control, which is too often reinforced by parents,
boyfriends, doctors, social workers, and of course, abortion counselors. As
the Chicana activist Gracie Olivarez says plaintively, "The poor cry out for
justice and equality and we respond with legalized abortion."
It is not enough to look at the "problem of unwanted pregnancies" unless we
ask why so many women become pregnant against their will. In many cases,
that means asking why so many men do not want pregnant women in their lives.
My own belief is that, despite a generation of propaganda about women's
"freedom of choice," women and especially teenaged girls in America are
still far from being sexually free, but feel pressured into having sexual
relationships they don't really want with men they don't really love because
having a boyfriend, even an abusive one, is the only form of security they
know. And if a woman is not afraid or ashamed to say "no," it is a rare
boyfriend who will respect that choice.
In a society where rape and sexual assault are endemic, few unmarried men
are wiling to take responsibility for either contraception or child care.
When their partners become pregnant, they believe they are being moral and
responsible if they offer to pay for the "termination." But such morality is
self-serving and shallow: It allows men to go right on being manipulative
playboys while leaving women to suffer all the pain and guilt of abortion.
Too often, young women expose themselves to the anguish of sacrificing a
wanted child in order to "save their relationship" with a man who was not
mature enough to use a condom, let alone assume the burdens of fatherhood.
There is yet another reason why so many pregnancies are unwanted: Our
patriarchal society does not want, and cannot cope with, mothers in the
workplace. The sexual liberation of women is no threat to men as long as we
are willing to model our sexuality on theirs, especially that of the least
mature. Postmodern patriarchy can accept the women whose sexuality conforms
to the consumerist model--sex for fun, pleasure, and profit with no strings
attached. Abortion now "liberates" this woman to be just as irresponsible as
male playboys have always been. Society can also accept the increasingly
rare woman who chooses--and is wealthy enough--to be a full time wife and
mother. But the woman who works in the marketplace and bears children, the
so-called "working mother" who is in fact the average American woman, still
faces discrimination in the workplace and demands on her time and energy so
severe that it is no wonder if she greets the news of another pregnancy with
horror, even if she is married and affluent...
Given an economic system that inflicts a penalty on motherhood and refuses
to recognize fatherhood at all, it is no wonder that so many pregnancies are
unwanted. Changing the system to accommodate the reality of working parents
would require an enormous investment of thought, creativity, commitment, and
of course, money. So it is no wonder that we prefer to take the cheap and
time-honored way out. Resolve the dilemma with an act of violence; reduce
the woman to a surrogate man, tough and competitive and untroubled by
fertility. Then deny that her fertility has any emotional consequences or
imposes any responsibilities, least of all on the man who fertilizes her.
Once this is done, it is easy enough to "terminate" the pregnancy and
justify this violence in the usual way, by denying humanity to the
"terminated" person. . .
It is far cheaper to abort the next generation than to nurture it; it is far
easier to subject women's bodies to surgical violence than to provide the
economic and emotional support that would make our fertility a blessing
rather than a curse. As long as patriarchy insists on business-as-usual--in
the bedroom, the board room, and the operating room--women's "right" to
abortion will be a pitiful surrogate for freedom from the sexual and
economic exploitation that compels this oppressive "choice." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/16/2003 5:50 AM (GMT -6) | | Countdown with Keith Oberman on MSNBC had a segment last night on a new scanning technique which allows parents to see many more details of their baby while in the womb. The pictures of the fetus at 27 weeks show a very human-looking baby smiling (something that was thought was a learned behavior) and yawning, even making breathing motions and blinking, though the child is still in the darkness of the womb. The question Oberman asked, of course, is what impact this new technology may have on the abortion debate. The problem is, the only person he asked this question was a bioethicist from Yale. Of course she said it would be insignificant. When asked if abortion doctors should show potential customers a picture of the being they are "terminating," her response was that doctors don't show people pictures of their gallstones before performing gall bladder surgery, so why should they show a patient a picture of the life they are ending?
Part of the problem of the interview was that Oberman only showed
pictures of babies at 27 months of gestation, which is right at the end of the second trimester, a point at which few people would dispute that the fetus is a living human baby. Children have survived being born at this early stage. It would be interesting to see pictures of a fetus at earlier stage; I would suspect these pictures would have a similar emotional weight as seeing a child smile at 27 weeks. Such pictures of an embryo or early-stage fetus would at least prevent the person considering abortion from fooling themselves about what they carry inside them.
Matt
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/16/2003 6:10 AM (GMT -6) | | Last Friday, as I held half of the brain of a sixty-year-old man in my hands, I might have remembered what the teacher told us about what kind of challenges "Premees" face in developing outside the womb. They face a lot.
Mention of "27 months" above brought that to the fore.
When my own was in the ICU only due to breathing in some amneotic fluid--on his way out--and three days later was pronounced "fully healthy," I happened to meet a college friend who's two-pounder was in the other room. I've thought of that boy and his challenges, and wonder whether he is at a school like the one I teach at.
quote:
Ecclesiates 2:24-25 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
Ecclesiates 3:22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot.
It might be tempting for us to think that there are those who are "out of the woods." The Premees are not out of the woods. Then neither are those of us who went full term.
We are ALL in the "hand of God."
Same goes for all of us -- even the very youngest, tinniest, and newest of us.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/16/2003 11:00 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
We are ALL in the
"hand of God."
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/17/2003 12:44 PM (GMT -6) | | Ecclesiates 2:24-25 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
Ecclesiates 3:22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/17/2003 1:43 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Ecclesiates 2:24-25 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
Ecclesiates 3:22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot.
The ability of people to eat and enjoy their work is dependent on the governance of others and the abuse of this governance is the chief reason they will not be able to eat and enjoy.
As such, the above support, rather than detract, from the importance of the problem of evil, since all have fallen short of the glory of God and are subject to abusing what ever power/decision-making they are vested with in either secular or religious governance bodies.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/17/2003 5:39 PM (GMT -6) | | Senate Makes a Curb on Abortion Likely
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
ASHINGTON, Sept. 17 — The first federal law that would restrict a woman's right to abortion moved a step closer to President Bush's signature today when the Senate, which had refused to send the bill to conference with the House, agreed unanimously to do so.
Backers of the measure, which would outlaw the late-term procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion, say they hope to have it on Mr. Bush's desk later this fall. The only remaining obstacle is a provision, contained in the Senate bill but not the House version, that affirms Senate support for the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion.
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As part of today's action, the Senate voted 93 to 0 to affirm that right again and disagree with the House bill.
But the unanimous vote — which opponents of abortion said reflected their desire to get the larger bill to conference — provided little comfort to advocates for abortion rights because both Democrats and Republicans expect the Roe language to be stripped from the final measure.
"It won't be a problem," said Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania and a chief sponsor of the larger measure. "It's extraneous to the matter at hand."
The move to ban the late-term procedure has been a centerpiece of the anti-abortion movement for eight years. If President Bush signs the measure, advocates for abortion rights say, it will be the first time that Congress has banned a safe medical procedure.
"We've got no illusions about where this Congress and this president stand on privacy and a woman's right to choose," said Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which advocates for abortion rights. "We're one step closer to President Bush' putting the government in between women and their doctors and becoming the first president ever to criminalize safe medical procedures."
The debate has raged through Congress, the courts and state legislatures for nearly a decade. But it was only this year, with Republicans gaining control of both houses of Congress, that opponents of abortion saw a chance for victory. In March, the Senate passed the measure 64 to 33. In June, the House did the same, 282 to 139.
But the controversy may not end with the president's signature. Many legal experts expect the Supreme Court to be the ultimate arbiter of the proposed ban; the court ruled in 2000 that several state bans on such abortions were unconstitutional.
Today's Senate vote capped eight hours of debate, spread out over the past three days, that again brought the divisive issue of abortion to the Senate chamber. In a sense, the discussion was the last gasp for abortion rights advocates, before they bowed to the realization that the bill would move forward in conference and onto the president's desk.
Typically, a vote to send a bill to conference is a pro forma measure, agreed to by both parties without a legislative debate. But in this case, Democrats refused to consent. Instead, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, insisted on an additional eight hours of debate and a formal vote disagreeing with the House measure.
Mrs. Boxer said she wanted to set the stage for a judicial review by once again putting senators on record as supporting Roe.
"I want the Senate to take a very strong stand for Roe so that when this goes to the court the court will see that in the record," she said before the vote.
She also accused the House of trying to undermine the Roe decision.
"That's their real agenda," Mrs. Boxer said. "All they had to do was accept the Senate language and this bill would be on the president's desk."
But some Democrats saw danger in Mrs. Boxer's strategy. "I personally think it's a little risky," a Senate aide said. "What if you don't get the votes? Why put senators in a box twice?"
As it turned out, Mrs. Boxer did get the votes — all of them, even that of Mr. Santorum, who argued vigorously on the Senate floor that "millions of children have died as a result of Roe v. Wade."
Mrs. Boxer said Republicans "were afraid they wouldn't win the votes, so the other side decided to make it less meaningful by all voting for it."
That is exactly what Republicans did, a senior Senate Republican aide, said, though not for the reason Mrs. Boxer suggested. Had the Boxer motion been defeated, the aide said, it would have put the larger measure in an uncertain parliamentary position, and possibly opened it up to further debate, only delaying the conference.
"We think we snookered her," he said. "By having everybody support it, it's kind of hard for her to spin it as a unanimous vote for Roe v. Wade."
Opponents of abortion were elated by the vote.
"The defenders of partial-birth abortion suffered another big setback today as our side, the backers of the bill, overcame one of the final remaining hurdles before enactment," said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee.
"Senator Boxer really made herself look silly," Mr. Johnson said. "Everybody knows that the conference committee will convene for the sole purpose of dropping" the Roe language. "She knows it, we know it, everybody in the press gallery knows it. She's suffering a big defeat."
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/17/2003 5:46 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by DLW
quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Ecclesiates 2:24-25 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
Ecclesiates 3:22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot.
The ability of people to eat and enjoy their work is dependent on the governance of others and the abuse of this governance is the chief reason they will not be able to eat and enjoy.
As such, the above support, rather than detract, from the importance of the problem of evil, since all have fallen short of the glory of God and are subject to abusing what ever power/decision-making they are vested with in either secular or religious governance bodies.
dlw
Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher
American Standard Version, 1901 ed.
Chapter 1
1The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 3What profit hath man of all his labor wherein he laboreth under the sun? 4One generation goeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever. 5The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to its place where it ariseth. 6The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it turneth about continually in its course, and the wind returneth again to its circuits. 7All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again. 8All things are full of weariness; man cannot utter [it]: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. 10 Is there a thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been long ago, in the ages which were before us. 11 There is no remembrance of the former [generations]; neither shall there be any remembrance of the latter [generations] that are to come, among those that shall come after. 12I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven: it is a sore travail that God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. 14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. 15That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. 16I communed with mine own hear, saying, Lo, I have gotten me great wisdom above all that were before me in Jerusalem; yea, my heart hath had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. 17And I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also was a striving after wind. 18For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
Chapter 2
1I said in my heart, Come now, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also was vanity. 2I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it? 3I searched in my heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, my heart yet guiding [me] with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what it was good for the sons of men that they should do under heaven all the days of their life. 4I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; 5I made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit; 6I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared; 7I bought men-servants and maid-servants, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all that were before me in Jerusalem; 8I gathered me also silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men, musical instruments, and that of all sorts. 9So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. 10And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor; and this was my portion from all my labor. 11Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; and, behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun. 12And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what [can] the man [do] that cometh after the king? [even] that which hath been done long ago. 13Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. 14The wise man's eyes are in his head, and the fool walketh in darkness: and yet I perceived that one event happeneth to them all. 15Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then said I in my heart, that this also is vanity. 16For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no remembrance for ever; seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. And how doth the wise man die even as the fool! 17So I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me; for all is vanity and a striving after wind. 18And I hated all my labor wherein I labored under the sun, seeing that I must leave it unto the man that shall be after me. 19And who knoweth whether he will be a wise man or a fool? yet will he have rule over all my labor wherein I have labored, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity. 20Therefore I turned about to cause my heart to despair concerning all the labor wherein I had labored under the sun. 21For there is a man whose labor is with wisdom, and with knowledge, and with skilfulness; yet to a man that hath not labored therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22For what hath a man of all his labor, and of the striving of his heart, wherein he laboreth under the sun? 23For all his days are [but] sorrows, and his travail is grief; yea, even in the night his heart taketh no rest. This also is vanity. 24There is nothing better for a man [than] that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it is from the hand of God. 25For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? 26For to the man that pleaseth him [God] giveth wisdom, and knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that pleaseth God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.
Chapter 3
1For everything there is a season, and a time for very purpose under heaven: 2a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. 9What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboreth? 10 I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. 11He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better for them, than to rejoice, and to do good so long as they live. 13And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy good in all his labor, is the gift of God. 14I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it; and God hath done it, that men should fear before him. 15That which is hath been long ago; and that which is to be hath long ago been: and God seeketh again that which is passed away. 16 And moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, that wickedness was there. 17I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work. 18I said in my heart, [It is] because of the sons of men, that God may prove them, and that they may see that they themselves are [but as] beasts. 19For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no preeminence above the beasts: for all is vanity. 20All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. 21Who knoweth the spirit of man, whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast, whether it goeth downward to the earth? 22Wherefore I saw that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him [back] to see what shall be after him?
Chapter 4
1Then I returned and saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and, behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. 2 Wherefore I praised the dead that have been long dead more than the living that are yet alive; 3yea, better than them both [did I esteem] him that hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun. 4Then I saw all labor and every skilful work, that for this a man is envied of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. 5 The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh. 6Better is a handful, with quietness, than two handfuls with labor and striving after wind. 7Then I returned and saw vanity under the sun. 8There is one that is alone, and he hath not a second; yea, he hath neither son nor brother; yet is there no end of all his labor, neither are his eyes satisfied with riches. For whom then, [saith he], do I labor, and deprive my soul of good? This also is vanity, yea, it is a sore travail. 9Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. 10For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up. 11Again, if two lie together, then they have warmth; but how can one be warm [alone]? 12And if a man prevail against him that is alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. 13Better is a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king, who knoweth not how to receive admonition any more. 14For out of prison he came forth to be king; yea, even in his kingdom he was born poor. 15I saw all the living that walk under the sun, that they were with the youth, the second, that stood up in his stead. 16There was no end of all the people, even of all them over whom he was: yet they that come after shall not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.
Chapter 5
1Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God; for to draw nigh to hear is better than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they know not that they do evil. 2Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty to utter anything before God; for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. 3For a dream cometh with a multitude of business, and a fool's voice with a multitude of words. 4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou vowest. 5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. 6Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that is was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thy hands? 7For in the multitude of dreams there are vanities, and in many words: but fear thou God. 8If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and the violent taking away of justice and righteousness in a province, marvel not at the matter: for one higher than the high regardeth; and there are higher than they. 9Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king [himself] is served by the field. 10He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance, with increase: this also is vanity. 11When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what advantage is there to the owner thereof, save the beholding [of them] with his eyes? 12The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the fulness of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. 13There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun, [namely], riches kept by the owner thereof to his hurt: 14and those riches perish by evil adventure; and if he hath begotten a son, there is nothing in his hand. 15As he came forth from his mother's womb, naked shall he go again as he came, and shall take nothing for his labor, which he may carry away in his hand. 16And this also is a grievous evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that he laboreth for the wind? 17All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he is sore vexed, and hath sickness and wrath. 18Behold, that which I have seen to be good and to be comely is for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labor, wherein he laboreth under the sun, all the days of his life which God hath given him: for this is his portion. 19Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor-this is the gift of God. 20For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth [him] in the joy of his heart. | | Back to Top | | |
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