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 Kohélet, fils de David, roi 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, a dit Kohélet, 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]
Quel profit tire l’homme de tout le mal qu’il se donne sous le soleil?
4 [Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
Une génération s’en va, une autre génération lui succède, et la terre subsiste perpétuellement.
5 [Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
Le soleil se lève, le soleil se couche: il se hâte vers son point de départ, où il se lèvera encore,
6 The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
pour s’avancer vers le sud et décrire sa courbe vers le nord; le vent progresse en évoluant toujours et repasse par les mêmes circuits.
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.
Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, et la mer n’en est pas remplie; vers l’endroit qui est assigné aux fleuves, ils dirigent invariablement leur cours.
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.
Toutes choses sont toujours en mouvement; personne n’est capable d’en rendre compte. L’Œil n’en a jamais assez de voir, ni l’oreille ne se lasse d’entendre.
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; ce qui s’est fait, c’est ce qui se fera: 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 dirait volontiers: "Voyez, ceci est nouveau" Eh bien! Cette chose a déjà existé dans les temps 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.
Nul souvenir ne subsiste des anciens, de même de leurs plus récents successeurs il ne demeurera aucun souvenir chez ceux qui viendront plus tard.
12 I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
Moi, Kohélet, je suis devenu 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’ai pris à cœur d’étudier, d’examiner avec sagacité tout ce qui se passe sous le soleil: c’est une triste besogne que Dieu a offerte aux fils d’Adam pour s’en tracasser.
14 It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
J’Ai donc observé toutes les œuvres qui s’accomplissent sous le soleil: eh bien! Tout est vanité et pâture de vent.
15 [Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
Ce qui est tordu ne peut être redressé, et ce qui manque ne peut entrer en compte.
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 me suis dit en moi-même: "Voilà que j’ai, moi, accumulé et amassé plus de sagesse que tous ceux qui m’ont précédé à Jérusalem; mon cœur a acquis un grand fonds de discernement et d’expérience."
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.
J’Avais en effet appliqué mon attention à connaître la sagesse et à discerner la folie et la sottise, et je me suis aperçu que cela aussi était pâture de vent;
18 The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
car, abondance de sagesse, abondance de chagrin, et accroître sa science, c’est accroître sa peine.
