Ecclesiastes 1
1 [I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
Paroles de l'Ecclésiaste, fils de David, qui régnait à Jérusalem.
2 I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
Vanité des vanités, dit l'Ecclésiaste, vanité des vanités! tout est vanité.
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]
Que reste-t-il à l'homme de tout le labeur: dont il se travaille sous le soleil?
4 [Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
Une génération s'en va, et une génération vient, et la terre est éternellement là.
5 [Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
Et le soleil se lève, et le soleil se couche et se hâte vers son gîte, d'où il se lève [encore].
6 The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
Le vent souffle au sud, et tourne au nord; il va tournant, tournant, et le vent refait ses mêmes tours.
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.
Toutes les rivières se rendent à la mer, et la mer ne se remplit pas; les rivières répètent leur cours vers les lieux où elles coulent.
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.
Tout dire lasse, et nul homme ne saurait l'énoncer; l'œil ne regarde jamais à être rassasié, et l'oreille n'écoute jamais à être remplie.
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].
Ce qui a été, c'est ce qui sera; et ce qui s'est fait, c'est ce qui se fera, et il n'y a rien de nouveau sous le soleil.
10 Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
Il est telle chose dont on dit: « Eh! voyez! c'est nouveau! » Elle fut déjà dans les siècles qui nous ont précédés:
11 [People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
le souvenir du passé ne reste pas; et les choses de l'avenir qui seront, ne resteront pas davantage dans le souvenir des hommes à venir.
12 I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
Moi, l'Ecclésiaste, je fus Roi d'Israël à Jérusalem.
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.
Et j'appliquai mon cœur à faire avec sagesse la recherche l'investigation de tout ce qui se fait sous le ciel. C'est là une tâche ingrate que Dieu a imposée aux enfants des hommes pour qu'ils s'y exercent. –
14 It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
Je vis tous les actes qui se font sous le soleil; et voici, le tout est vanité et effort stérile.
15 [Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
Ce qui est de travers ne peut se redresser, et les lacunes ne peuvent se compter.
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!”
Je disais en mon cœur: Voici, j'ai acquis une sagesse plus grande et plus étendue que tous mes prédécesseurs à Jérusalem, et mon cœur a vu beaucoup de sagesse et de science.
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.
Mais ayant appliqué mon cœur à discerner ce qui est sagesse, et à discerner ce qui est folie, je reconnus que cela aussi est un effort stérile.
18 The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
Car beaucoup de sagesse est accompagné de beaucoup de mécontentement, et qui augmente sa science, augmente ses peines.
