Ecclesiastes 1

Everything is vanity

The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: ²“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”a ³What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?b

⁴Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.c ⁵The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. ⁶The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

⁷All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. ⁸All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.d ⁹What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.e

¹⁰Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. ¹¹No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.

With much wisdom comes much grief

¹²I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. ¹³I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! ¹⁴I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.f

¹⁵What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. ¹⁶I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷Then 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.

¹⁸For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.g