Ecclesiastes 1
1 Words of a preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
[I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
2 Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher, vanity of vanities: the whole [is] vanity.
I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
3 What advantage [is] to man by all his labor that he labors at under the sun?
(What do people gain from all the work that they do here on the earth?/It seems that people gain no lasting benefit from all the work that they do here on the earth.) [RHQ]
4 A generation is going, and a generation is coming, and the earth is standing for all time.
[Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
5 Also, the sun has risen, and the sun has gone in, and to its place panting it is rising there.
[Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
6 Going to the south, and turning around to the north, turning around, turning around, the wind is going, and by its circuits the wind has returned.
The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
7 All the streams are going to the sea, and the sea is not full; to a place to where the streams are going, there they are turning back to go.
All the streams flow into the sea, but the sea is never full. The water returns [to the sky], and [when it rains], the water returns to the rivers, and it flows again to the sea.
8 All these things are wearying; a man is not able to speak, the eye is not satisfied by seeing, nor is the ear filled from hearing.
Everything is boring, [with the result that] we do not even want to talk about it. We [SYN] see things, but we always want to see more. We [SYN] hear things, but we always want to hear more.
9 What [is] that which has been? It [is] that which is, and what [is] that which has been done? It [is] that which is done, and there is not an entirely new thing under the sun.
[Everything continues to be the same as it has always been]; things that happen have happened previously, and they will happen again. What has been done before will be done again. There is nothing [really] new in this world [MTY].
10 There is a thing of which [one] says: “See this, it [is] new!” Already it has been in the ages that were before us!
Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
11 There is not a remembrance of former [generations]; and also of the latter that are, there is no remembrance of them with those that are at the last.
[People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
12 I, a preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem.
I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
13 And I have given my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that has been done under the heavens. It [is] a sad travail God has given to the sons of man to be humbled by it.
By being wise, I concentrated on understanding everything that was being done on the earth [MTY]. [But I found out that] God causes [all of] us to experience things that cause us to be unhappy/miserable.
14 I have seen all the works that have been done under the sun, and behold, the whole [is] vanity and distress of spirit!
It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
15 A crooked thing [one] is not able to make straight, and a lacking thing is not able to be numbered.
[Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
16 I spoke with my heart, saying, “I, behold, have magnified and added wisdom above everyone who has been before me at Jerusalem, and my heart has seen wisdom and knowledge abundantly.
I said to myself, “[Hey], I am wiser than any of the kings that ruled in Jerusalem before I [became the king]. I am wiser and I know more than any of them!”
17 And I give my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I have known that even this [is] distress of spirit;
[So] I determined to learn [more] about being wise and to learn about knowing about many things, and [also] to learn about [doing things that are] very foolish [DOU]. [But] I found out that trying to understand those things was also [useless, like] chasing the wind.
18 for in abundance of wisdom [is] abundance of sadness, and he who adds knowledge adds pain.”
The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
