Ecclesiastes 1
1 [I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
Paroles de l’Ecclésiaste, fils de David, roi de Jérusalem.
2 I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
Vanité des vanités, dit l’Ecclésiaste, vanité des vanités, tout est vanité.
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]
Quel avantage revient-il à l’homme de toute la peine qu’il se donne sous le soleil?
4 [Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
Une génération s’en va, une autre vient, et la terre subsiste toujours.
5 [Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
Le soleil se lève, le soleil se couche; il soupire après le lieu d’où il se lève de nouveau.
6 The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
Le vent se dirige vers le midi, tourne vers le nord; puis il tourne encore, et reprend les mêmes circuits.
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.
Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, et la mer n’est point remplie; ils continuent à aller vers le lieu où ils se dirigent.
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.
Toutes choses sont en travail au-delà de ce qu’on peut dire; l’œil ne se rassasie pas de voir, et l’oreille ne se lasse pas d’entendre.
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].
Ce qui a été, c’est ce qui sera, et ce qui s’est fait, c’est ce qui se fera, il n’y a rien de nouveau sous le soleil.
10 Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
S’il est une chose dont on dise: Vois ceci, c’est nouveau! Cette chose existait déjà dans les siècles qui nous ont précédés.
11 [People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
On ne se souvient pas de ce qui est ancien; et ce qui arrivera dans la suite ne laissera pas de souvenir chez ceux qui vivront plus tard.
12 I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
Moi, l’Ecclésiaste, j’ai été roi d’Israël à Jérusalem.
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.
J’ai appliqué mon cœur à rechercher et à sonder par la sagesse tout ce qui se fait sous les cieux: c’est là une occupation pénible, à laquelle Dieu soumet les fils de l’homme.
14 It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
J’ai vu tout ce qui se fait sous le soleil; et voici, tout est vanité et poursuite du vent.
15 [Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
Ce qui est courbé ne peut se redresser, et ce qui manque ne peut être compté.
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!”
J’ai dit en mon cœur: Voici, j’ai grandi et surpassé en sagesse tous ceux qui ont dominé avant moi sur Jérusalem, et mon cœur a vu beaucoup de sagesse et de science.
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.
J’ai appliqué mon cœur à connaître la sagesse, et à connaître la sottise et la folie; j’ai compris que cela aussi c’est la poursuite du vent.
18 The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
Car avec beaucoup de sagesse on a beaucoup de chagrin, et celui qui augmente sa science augmente sa douleur.
