Ecclesiastes 1
1 [I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
Here are the words of the Teacher, the king of Jerusalem, David's son.
2 I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
“Everything passes—it's so temporary! It's all so hard to understand!” says the Teacher.
3 (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]
What benefit do you get for slaving away in this life?
4 [Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
People come, and people go, but the earth lasts forever!
5 [Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
The sun comes up, and the sun goes down, and then rushes to its place to rise again.
6 The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
The wind blows south, and then turns to the north. Round and round it spins, finally coming full circle.
7 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.
Streams all flow into the sea, but the sea never becomes full. The streams return to the place from where they came.
8 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.
Everything just keeps on going. You can't say all there is to say. You can't see all there is to see. You can't hear all there is to hear.
9 [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].
Everything that was will continue to be; everything that has been done will be done again. Nothing new ever happens here.
10 Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
There's nothing anyone can point to and say, “Look! Here's something new.” In fact it's been around for ages, long before our time.
11 [People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
The problem is we don't remember people from the past, and people in the future won't remember those who came before them.
12 I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
I am the Teacher, and I was king over Israel, reigning from Jerusalem.
13 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.
I decided to focus my mind to explore, using wisdom, everything that happens here on earth. This is a tough assignment that God has given people to keep them busy!
14 It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
I examined everything people do here on earth, and discovered that it's all so temporary—trying to understand it is like trying to pin down the wind!
15 [Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
You can't straighten what is twisted, and you can't count what isn't there.
16 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!”
I thought to myself, “I've become very wise, wiser than all the kings of Jerusalem before me. My mind has gained a great deal of wisdom and knowledge.”
17 [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.
So I decided to use my mind to learn everything about wisdom, and madness and foolishness as well. But I found out that this is as hard as trying to catch hold of the wind.
18 The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
For with great wisdom comes great frustration. The greater the knowledge, the greater the pain.
