Pengkhotbah 1
1 Inilah perkataan Pengkhotbah, anak Daud, raja di Yerusalem.
[I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
2 Kesia-siaan belaka, kata Pengkhotbah, kesia-siaan belaka, segala sesuatu adalah sia-sia.
I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
3 Apakah gunanya manusia berusaha dengan jerih payah di bawah matahari?
(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 Keturunan yang satu pergi dan keturunan yang lain datang, tetapi bumi tetap ada.
[Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
5 Matahari terbit, matahari terbenam, lalu terburu-buru menuju tempat ia terbit kembali.
[Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
6 Angin bertiup ke selatan, lalu berputar ke utara, terus-menerus ia berputar, dan dalam putarannya angin itu kembali.
The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
7 Semua sungai mengalir ke laut, tetapi laut tidak juga menjadi penuh; ke mana sungai mengalir, ke situ sungai mengalir selalu.
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 Segala sesuatu menjemukan, sehingga tak terkatakan oleh manusia; mata tidak kenyang melihat, telinga tidak puas mendengar.
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 Apa yang pernah ada akan ada lagi, dan apa yang pernah dibuat akan dibuat lagi; tak ada sesuatu yang baru di bawah matahari.
[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 Adakah sesuatu yang dapat dikatakan: "Lihatlah, ini baru!"? Tetapi itu sudah ada dulu, lama sebelum kita ada.
Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
11 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.
[People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
12 Aku, Pengkhotbah, adalah raja atas Israel di Yerusalem.
I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
13 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.
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 Aku telah melihat segala perbuatan yang dilakukan orang di bawah matahari, tetapi lihatlah, segala sesuatu adalah kesia-siaan dan usaha menjaring angin.
It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
15 Yang bongkok tak dapat diluruskan, dan yang tidak ada tak dapat dihitung.
[Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
16 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."
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 Aku telah membulatkan hatiku untuk memahami hikmat dan pengetahuan, kebodohan dan kebebalan. Tetapi aku menyadari bahwa hal inipun adalah usaha menjaring angin,
[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 karena di dalam banyak hikmat ada banyak susah hati, dan siapa memperbanyak pengetahuan, memperbanyak kesedihan.
The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
