"surely I know that it will be better with those who fear God" (8:12), yet "there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked" (8:14). How do the two stand together?

The chapter has both, in the Preacher's own words, two verses apart. 8:12 already grants what he has seen: "Though a sinner commits crimes a hundred times, and lives long" (8:12). Then: "yet surely I know that it will be better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him" (8:12), and "But it shall not be well with the wicked" (8:13). Then 8:14 tells what he calls vanity: righteous men "to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked" (8:14), and wicked men "to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous" (8:14), "I said that this also is vanity" (8:14). He has said things like both before: "God will judge the righteous and the wicked" (3:17), and "there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who lives long in his evildoing" (7:15). The introduction to Ecclesiastes sets 8:12 and 8:14 side by side, and these notes won't smooth them out, make one the Preacher's real view, or make 8:12 a promise about anyone's life.