Ecclesiastes

¹ The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:

² says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”

³ at which he toils under the sun?

⁴ but the earth remains forever.

⁵ and hurries back to where it rises.

⁶ and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

⁷ yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

⁸ more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

⁹ what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

¹⁰ “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

¹¹ and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

¹² I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

¹³ I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men!

¹⁴ I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

¹⁵ what is lacking cannot be counted.

¹⁶ I thought to myself, “Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.”

¹⁷ Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

¹⁸ the more knowledge, the more grief.