伝道者の書 1
1 ダビデの子、エルサレムの王である伝道者の言葉。
[I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
2 伝道者は言う、空の空、空の空、いっさいは空である。
I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
3 日の下で人が労するすべての労苦は、その身になんの益があるか。
(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 世は去り、世はきたる。しかし地は永遠に変らない。
[Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
5 日はいで、日は没し、その出た所に急ぎ行く。
[Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
6 風は南に吹き、また転じて、北に向かい、めぐりにめぐって、またそのめぐる所に帰る。
The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
7 川はみな、海に流れ入る、しかし海は満ちることがない。川はその出てきた所にまた帰って行く。
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 すべての事は人をうみ疲れさせる、人はこれを言いつくすことができない。目は見ることに飽きることがなく、耳は聞くことに満足することがない。
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 先にあったことは、また後にもある、先になされた事は、また後にもなされる。日の下には新しいものはない。
[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 「見よ、これは新しいものだ」と言われるものがあるか、それはわれわれの前にあった世々に、すでにあったものである。
Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
11 前の者のことは覚えられることがない、また、きたるべき後の者のことも、後に起る者はこれを覚えることがない。
[People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
12 伝道者であるわたしはエルサレムで、イスラエルの王であった。
I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
13 わたしは心をつくし、知恵を用いて、天が下に行われるすべてのことを尋ね、また調べた。これは神が、人の子らに与えて、ほねおらせられる苦しい仕事である。
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 わたしは日の下で人が行うすべてのわざを見たが、みな空であって風を捕えるようである。
It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
15 曲ったものは、まっすぐにすることができない、欠けたものは数えることができない。
[Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
16 わたしは心の中に語って言った、「わたしは、わたしより先にエルサレムを治めたすべての者にまさって、多くの知恵を得た。わたしの心は知恵と知識を多く得た」。
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 わたしは心をつくして知恵を知り、また狂気と愚痴とを知ろうとしたが、これもまた風を捕えるようなものであると悟った。
[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 それは知恵が多ければ悩みが多く、知識を増す者は憂いを増すからである。
The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
