Ecclesiastes 1
1 [I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
Inilah perkataan Pengkhotbah, anak Daud, raja di Yerusalem.
2 I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
Kesia-siaan belaka, kata Pengkhotbah, kesia-siaan belaka, segala sesuatu adalah sia-sia.
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]
Apakah gunanya manusia berusaha dengan jerih payah di bawah matahari?
4 [Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
Keturunan yang satu pergi dan keturunan yang lain datang, tetapi bumi tetap ada.
5 [Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
Matahari terbit, matahari terbenam, lalu terburu-buru menuju tempat ia terbit kembali.
6 The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
Angin bertiup ke selatan, lalu berputar ke utara, terus-menerus ia berputar, dan dalam putarannya angin itu kembali.
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.
Semua sungai mengalir ke laut, tetapi laut tidak juga menjadi penuh; ke mana sungai mengalir, ke situ sungai mengalir selalu.
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.
Segala sesuatu menjemukan, sehingga tak terkatakan oleh manusia; mata tidak kenyang melihat, telinga tidak puas mendengar.
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].
Apa yang pernah ada akan ada lagi, dan apa yang pernah dibuat akan dibuat lagi; tak ada sesuatu yang baru di bawah matahari.
10 Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
Adakah sesuatu yang dapat dikatakan: "Lihatlah, ini baru!"? Tetapi itu sudah ada dulu, lama sebelum kita ada.
11 [People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
Kenang-kenangan dari masa lampau tidak ada, dan dari masa depan yang masih akan datangpun tidak akan ada kenang-kenangan pada mereka yang hidup sesudahnya.
12 I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
Aku, Pengkhotbah, adalah raja atas Israel di Yerusalem.
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.
Aku membulatkan hatiku untuk memeriksa dan menyelidiki dengan hikmat segala yang terjadi di bawah langit. Itu pekerjaan yang menyusahkan yang diberikan Allah kepada anak-anak manusia untuk melelahkan diri.
14 It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
Aku telah melihat segala perbuatan yang dilakukan orang di bawah matahari, tetapi lihatlah, segala sesuatu adalah kesia-siaan dan usaha menjaring angin.
15 [Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
Yang bongkok tak dapat diluruskan, dan yang tidak ada tak dapat dihitung.
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!”
Aku berkata dalam hati: "Lihatlah, aku telah memperbesar dan menambah hikmat lebih dari pada semua orang yang memerintah atas Yerusalem sebelum aku, dan hatiku telah memperoleh banyak hikmat dan pengetahuan."
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.
Aku telah membulatkan hatiku untuk memahami hikmat dan pengetahuan, kebodohan dan kebebalan. Tetapi aku menyadari bahwa hal inipun adalah usaha menjaring angin,
18 The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
karena di dalam banyak hikmat ada banyak susah hati, dan siapa memperbanyak pengetahuan, memperbanyak kesedihan.
