The Only Life You Get — Modern Paraphrase | fresh.bible
The Only Life You Get.
Ecclesiastes 9 — The chapter that turns mortality into the best reason to stop waiting
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Key Takeaways
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The race doesn't go to the fastest and the battle doesn't go to the strongest — work with everything you have, but don't confuse effort with control over the outcome.
📢 Chapter 9 — The Only Life You Get ⏳
has been circling this question for chapters now. He's watched the suffer and the wicked thrive. He's seen brilliant people overlooked and fools handed the microphone. And now he arrives at the observation that sits at the center of everything he's been saying — the one that either breaks you or frees you.
Everyone dies. The good. The bad. The people who gave everything to God and the people who never gave him a thought. The same end comes for all of them. And if that's where the chapter stopped, it would be the most depressing thing ever written. But Solomon doesn't stop there. He takes that brutal honesty and turns it into something nobody expected — an invitation to actually live.
The Same End for Everyone 🌑
Let me be honest with you. This part is heavy. sat with all of it — every observation, every experiment, every attempt to make sense of life — and arrived at a conclusion that's hard to hear:
Everything — the righteous, the wise, everything they do — it's all in God's hands. But whether what's ahead is love or hardship, no one can tell. The outcome is the same for everyone. The same fate comes to the righteous and the wicked, the clean and the unclean, the person who sacrifices and the person who never does. The one who lives well and the one who doesn't — same destination. The one who makes solemn oaths and the one who avoids them — same destination.
This is the hardest thing about life under the sun — the same event happens to all. And on top of that, the human heart is full of evil and foolishness the whole time people are alive. And after that? They join the dead.
There's no spin to put on this. Solomon isn't being cynical — he's being brutally clear. From the outside, living a good life and living a reckless one can look like they arrive at the same place. You can do everything right and still face the same mortality as someone who did everything wrong. That's the tension he's sitting in. And if you've ever watched a good person suffer while someone terrible seemed to coast — you've felt this too.
A Living Dog 🐕
But then pivots. Just slightly. And it changes the trajectory of everything:
But anyone still alive has something — hope. A living dog is better off than a dead lion. The living at least know they will die. But the dead know nothing. They have no more reward. Even the memory of them fades away.
Their love, their hate, their ambition — all of it gone. They have no more share in anything that happens under the sun.
Think about that image for a second. A lion is majestic. Powerful. The top of the food chain. But a dead lion can't do anything. A scrappy, overlooked, unremarkable dog that's still breathing? It has something the lion doesn't — a chance. A tomorrow. The ability to change, to choose, to somebody, to start over.
The fact that you're reading this means you're the dog. You're still in the game. And Solomon wants you to feel the weight of that — not as pressure, but as possibility.
So Go Live 🍷
Here's the turn. After all the heaviness, after staring at mortality with both eyes open, doesn't say "give up." He says the opposite. And he says it with an urgency that almost sounds like :
Go — eat your food and enjoy it. Drink your wine with a glad heart. God has already approved what you do.
Wear your best clothes. Don't hold back the things that make life feel alive. Enjoy life with the person you love, all through the fleeting days you've been given under the sun — because this is your portion. This is what you get from all your hard work.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with everything you have. There's no work, no planning, no knowledge, no wisdom in Sheol — and that's where you're headed.
Read that again. This isn't "eat, drink, and be merry because nothing matters." This is the opposite. It's "eat, drink, and be present because everything matters." Every meal. Every relationship. Every project you put your hands on. Do it with your whole self — not because you'll be rewarded for it later, but because the window is open right now and it won't be open forever.
We spend so much of our lives optimizing for someday. Saving the nice dishes for guests. Putting off the trip. Telling ourselves we'll enjoy things when we've earned it. Solomon says: the permission has already been given. Stop waiting.
Time and Chance 🎲
Just when you might think is saying "work hard and you'll be fine," he pulls the rug again. Because he's honest about what he's seen:
I noticed something else under the sun. The race doesn't always go to the fastest. The battle doesn't always go to the strongest. The wise don't always have enough to eat. The brilliant don't always get rich. And the skilled don't always get recognized. Time and chance happen to all of them.
No one knows when their moment will come. Like fish caught in a cruel net, like birds trapped in a snare — people are caught by disaster when it falls on them suddenly, without warning.
This is where Solomon names what most of us quietly suspect but never say out loud. We want to believe the world is a merit system — that talent wins, that hard work always pays off, that the cream always rises. And sometimes it does. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes an incredibly qualified person doesn't get the job. Sometimes the healthiest person in the room gets the diagnosis. Sometimes timing is everything and you can't control timing.
Solomon isn't saying effort is pointless. He just told you to work with all your might. He's saying don't confuse effort with control. You are not the author of your own story the way you think you are.
The Hero Nobody Remembered 🏘️
Then told a story. Small and devastating:
I saw something under the sun that struck me as deeply significant. There was a small city with only a few people in it. A powerful king came and surrounded it, building massive siege walls against it. But inside the city, there was a poor man — and he was wise. He saved the entire city with his wisdom.
And nobody remembered him.
Solomon sat with that and said:
Wisdom is better than strength. But the poor man's wisdom gets overlooked. His words go unheard.
Let that land. A man saved an entire city. Not with money. Not with military power. Not with connections. With . And after it was over, everyone moved on. Nobody built a statue. Nobody wrote a song. Nobody even remembered his name.
You've seen this. The person in the meeting who quietly had the right answer but got talked over. The friend who held your world together during the worst season of your life — and nobody knows. The unglamorous, unrecognized people who keep things from falling apart. Solomon says their contribution is worth more than power. But the world doesn't treat it that way.
Quiet Words, Loud Fools 🤫
closed the chapter with two that feel like they could have been written this morning:
The quiet words of the wise are worth more than the shouting of a ruler surrounded by fools.
Wisdom is better than weapons of war — but one person's foolishness can destroy an enormous amount of good.
In a world that rewards volume, Solomon says the quiet voice in the room is usually the one worth listening to. The loudest person isn't the wisest. a profoundly confident isn't a deeply correct. And all it takes is one reckless person to undo what took years of careful to build.
That's the tension Solomon leaves you with. Wisdom is better. Wisdom saves cities. Wisdom outlasts brute force. But it doesn't always get the credit. And a single act of foolishness can tear down everything it built. So pursue wisdom anyway. Live fully anyway. Do your work with everything you have — not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because this is the life you were given. And it won't last forever.