Ecclesiastes
Chapter 1
1 This is the Preacher’s message, David’s son and king in Jerusalem.
2 Everything is meaningless, says the Teacher; everything is completely meaningless.
3 What good does a person get from all the work they do under the sun?
4 One generation goes, and another comes, but the earth lasts forever.
5 The sun rises and sets, and quickly goes back to where it rose.
6 The wind moves south, then turns north; it goes around and around, and comes back to its paths.
7 All rivers flow into the sea, but the sea never fills up. The rivers go back to where they came from and start again.
8 Everything is hard work; people can’t express it: the eye is never happy with what it sees, nor the ear with what it hears.
9 What has happened before will happen again; what has been done before will be done again; there’s nothing new under the sun.
10 Can we say about anything, “Look, this is new”? It has already existed long ago, before our time.
11 People do not remember past things; and those to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
13 I devoted myself to seek and understand by wisdom everything that happens on earth: this difficult task has been given by God to humanity to work on.
14 I have seen everything people do on earth, and truly, everything is pointless and frustrating.
15 What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is missing cannot be counted.
16 I talked to myself, saying, “Look, I have become very wealthy and have gained more wisdom than anyone before me in Jerusalem; yes, my heart has learned much about wisdom and knowledge.”
17 I devoted myself to understand wisdom, madness, and foolishness and realized that this too is frustrating.
18 With much wisdom comes much sadness; gaining more knowledge leads to more sorrow.