Ecclésiaste 1
1 Paroles de l’Ecclésiaste, fils de David, roi de Jérusalem.
[I am Solomon], the son of [King] David. [I rule] in Jerusalem [and people call me] ‘The (Preacher/Religious Teacher)’.
2 Vanité des vanités, dit l’Ecclésiaste, vanité des vanités, tout est vanité.
I say that everything is mysterious; everything is hard for me to understand; it is difficult to understand why everything happens.
3 Quel avantage revient-il à l’homme de toute la peine qu’il se donne sous le soleil?
(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 Une génération s’en va, une autre vient, et la terre subsiste toujours.
[Each year] old people die and babies are born, but the earth never changes.
5 Le soleil se lève, le soleil se couche; il soupire après le lieu d’où il se lève de nouveau.
[Each morning] the sun rises, and [each evening] it sets, and [then] it hurries around to where it started from.
6 Le vent se dirige vers le midi, tourne vers le nord; puis il tourne encore, et reprend les mêmes circuits.
The wind blows south, and then it [turns around to start blowing towards] the north. It goes around and around in circles.
7 Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, et la mer n’est point remplie; ils continuent à aller vers le lieu où ils se dirigent.
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 Toutes choses sont en travail au-delà de ce qu’on peut dire; l’œil ne se rassasie pas de voir, et l’oreille ne se lasse pas d’entendre.
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 Ce qui a été, c’est ce qui sera, et ce qui s’est fait, c’est ce qui se fera, il n’y a rien de nouveau sous le soleil.
[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 S’il est une chose dont on dise: Vois ceci, c’est nouveau! Cette chose existait déjà dans les siècles qui nous ont précédés.
Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!” But it has existed previously; it existed before we were born.
11 On ne se souvient pas de ce qui est ancien; et ce qui arrivera dans la suite ne laissera pas de souvenir chez ceux qui vivront plus tard.
[People] do not remember the things [that happened] long ago, and in the future, people will not remember what we are doing now.
12 Moi, l’Ecclésiaste, j’ai été roi d’Israël à Jérusalem.
I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel [for many years, ruling] in Jerusalem.
13 J’ai appliqué mon cœur à rechercher et à sonder par la sagesse tout ce qui se fait sous les cieux: c’est là une occupation pénible, à laquelle Dieu soumet les fils de l’homme.
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 J’ai vu tout ce qui se fait sous le soleil; et voici, tout est vanité et poursuite du vent.
It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is [like] [MET] chasing the wind.
15 Ce qui est courbé ne peut se redresser, et ce qui manque ne peut être compté.
[Many] things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight; we cannot count things that do not exist.
16 J’ai dit en mon cœur: Voici, j’ai grandi et surpassé en sagesse tous ceux qui ont dominé avant moi sur Jérusalem, et mon cœur a vu beaucoup de sagesse et de science.
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 J’ai appliqué mon cœur à connaître la sagesse, et à connaître la sottise et la folie; j’ai compris que cela aussi c’est la poursuite du vent.
[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 Car avec beaucoup de sagesse on a beaucoup de chagrin, et celui qui augmente sa science augmente sa douleur.
The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became. The more things I knew about, the sadder I became.
