Ecclésiaste 1
1 Paroles de Kohélet, fils de David, roi à Jérusalem.
[I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
2 Vanité des vanités, a dit Kohélet, vanité des vanités; tout est vanité!
I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
3 Quel profit tire l’homme de tout le mal qu’il se donne sous le soleil?
(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 Une génération s’en va, une autre génération lui succède, et la terre subsiste perpétuellement.
[Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
5 Le soleil se lève, le soleil se couche: il se hâte vers son point de départ, où il se lèvera encore,
[Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
6 pour s’avancer vers le sud et décrire sa courbe vers le nord; le vent progresse en évoluant toujours et repasse par les mêmes circuits.
The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
7 Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, et la mer n’en est pas remplie; vers l’endroit qui est assigné aux fleuves, ils dirigent invariablement leur cours.
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 Toutes choses sont toujours en mouvement; personne n’est capable d’en rendre compte. L’Œil n’en a jamais assez de voir, ni l’oreille ne se lasse d’entendre.
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 Ce qui a été c’est ce qui sera; ce qui s’est fait, c’est ce qui se fera: il n’y a rien de nouveau sous le soleil!
[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 Il est telle chose dont on dirait volontiers: "Voyez, ceci est nouveau" Eh bien! Cette chose a déjà existé dans les temps qui nous ont précédés.
Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
11 Nul souvenir ne subsiste des anciens, de même de leurs plus récents successeurs il ne demeurera aucun souvenir chez ceux qui viendront plus tard.
[People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
12 Moi, Kohélet, je suis devenu roi d’Israël, à Jérusalem.
I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
13 Et j’ai pris à cœur d’étudier, d’examiner avec sagacité tout ce qui se passe sous le soleil: c’est une triste besogne que Dieu a offerte aux fils d’Adam pour s’en tracasser.
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 J’Ai donc observé toutes les œuvres qui s’accomplissent sous le soleil: eh bien! Tout est vanité et pâture de vent.
It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
15 Ce qui est tordu ne peut être redressé, et ce qui manque ne peut entrer en compte.
[Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
16 Je me suis dit en moi-même: "Voilà que j’ai, moi, accumulé et amassé plus de sagesse que tous ceux qui m’ont précédé à Jérusalem; mon cœur a acquis un grand fonds de discernement et d’expérience."
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 J’Avais en effet appliqué mon attention à connaître la sagesse et à discerner la folie et la sottise, et je me suis aperçu que cela aussi était pâture de vent;
[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 car, abondance de sagesse, abondance de chagrin, et accroître sa science, c’est accroître sa peine.
The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
