Pengkhotbah 1
1 Kata-kata dalam buku ini berasal dari Sang Pemikir, putra Daud, yang menggantikan Daud menjadi raja di Yerusalem.
[I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
2 Sang Pemikir berkata: Semuanya sia-sia dan tidak berguna! Hidup itu percuma, semuanya tak ada artinya.
I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
3 Seumur hidup kita bekerja, memeras keringat. Tetapi, mana hasilnya yang dapat kita banggakan?
(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 muncul dan keturunan yang lain lenyap, tetapi dunia tetap sama saja.
[Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
5 Matahari masih terbit dan masih pula terbenam. Dengan letih ia kembali ke tempatnya semula, lalu terbit lagi.
[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 berhembus ke utara; ia berputar-putar, lalu kembali lagi.
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 tak kunjung penuh. Airnya kembali ke hulu sungai, lalu mulai mengalir lagi.
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 Segalanya membosankan dan kebosanan itu tidak terkatakan. Mata kita tidak kenyang-kenyang memandang; telinga kita tidak puas-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 terjadi, akan terjadi lagi. Apa yang pernah dilakukan, akan dilakukan lagi. Tidak ada sesuatu yang baru di dunia ini.
[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 Ada orang yang berkata, "Lihatlah, ini baru!" Tetapi, itu sudah ada sebelum kita lahir.
Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
11 Orang tak akan ingat kejadian di masa lalu. Begitu pun kejadian sekarang dan nanti, tidak akan dikenang oleh orang di masa mendatang.
[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, Sang Pemikir, memerintah di Yerusalem sebagai raja atas Israel.
I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
13 Aku bertekad untuk menyelidiki dan mempelajari dengan bijaksana segala yang terjadi di dunia ini. Nasib yang disediakan Allah bagi kita sungguh menyedihkan.
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 orang di dunia ini. Percayalah, semuanya itu sia-sia, seperti usaha mengejar 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 bengkok tak dapat diluruskan, dan yang tak ada tak dapat dihitung.
[Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
16 Pikirku, "Aku ini telah menjadi orang penting dan arif, jauh lebih arif daripada semua orang yang memerintah di Yerusalem sebelum aku. Aku mengumpulkan banyak pengetahuan dan ilmu."
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 Maka aku bertekad untuk mengetahui perbedaan antara pengetahuan dan kebodohan, antara kebijaksanaan dan kedunguan. Tetapi ternyata aku ini seperti mengejar angin saja.
[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 Sebab semakin banyak hikmat kita, semakin banyak pula kecemasan kita. Semakin banyak pengetahuan kita, semakin banyak pula kesusahan kita.
The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
