Ecclésiaste 1
1 Paroles de l'Ecclésiaste, fils de David, roi de 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, dit l'Ecclésiaste; 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 avantage a l'homme de tout le travail auquel il se livre 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 passe, et une autre vient; mais la terre subsiste toujours.
[Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
5 Le soleil se lève, et le soleil se couche, et il soupire après le lieu d'où il se lève de nouveau.
[Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
6 Le vent va vers le midi, et tourne vers le nord; il va tournoyant çà et là, et revient à ses 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'est point remplie; les fleuves continuent à aller vers le lieu d'où ils viennent.
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 travaillent plus que l'homme ne saurait dire; l'œil n'est jamais rassasié de voir, ni l'oreille 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, et 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 Y a-t-il une chose dont on puisse dire: Vois ceci, c'est nouveau? Elle a déjà été dans les siècles qui furent avant nous.
Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
11 On ne se souvient plus des choses d'autrefois; de même on ne se souviendra point des choses à venir, parmi 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, l'Ecclésiaste, j'ai été roi sur Israël à Jérusalem;
I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
13 Et j'ai appliqué mon cœur à rechercher et à sonder avec sagesse tout ce qui se fait sous les cieux; c'est là une occupation pénible que Dieu a donnée aux hommes, afin qu'ils s'y exercent.
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 vu tout ce qui se fait sous le soleil, et voilà, tout est vanité et tourment d'esprit.
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 courbé ne se peut redresser; et ce qui manque ne peut être compté.
[Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
16 J'ai parlé en mon cœur, et j'ai dit: Voici, j'ai grandi et surpassé en sagesse tous ceux qui ont été avant moi sur Jérusalem, et mon cœur a vu beaucoup de sagesse et de science;
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 Et j'ai appliqué mon cœur à connaître la sagesse, et à connaître la sottise et la folie; mais j'ai connu que cela aussi était un tourment d'esprit.
[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 avec beaucoup de science, il y a beaucoup de chagrin; et celui qui accroît sa science, accroît sa douleur.
The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
