Ecclesiastes 1
1 [I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
These are the words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
“Futility of futilities,” says the Teacher, “futility of futilities! Everything is futile!”
3 (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]
What does a man gain from all his labor, at which he toils under the sun?
4 [Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
5 [Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
The sun rises and the sun sets; it hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
The wind blows southward, then turns northward; round and round it swirls, ever returning on its course.
7 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.
All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full; to the place from which the streams come, there again they flow.
8 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.
All things are wearisome, more than one can describe; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear content with hearing.
9 [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].
What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
Is there a case where one can say, “Look, this is new”? It has already existed in the ages before us.
11 [People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
There is no remembrance of those who came before, and those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow after.
12 I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
13 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.
And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid upon the sons of men to occupy them!
14 It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and have found them all to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.
15 [Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 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!”
I said to myself, “Behold, I have grown and increased in wisdom beyond all those before me who were over Jerusalem, and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.”
17 [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.
So I set my mind to know wisdom and madness and folly; I learned that this, too, is a pursuit of the wind.
18 The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow, and as knowledge grows, grief increases.
