Ecclesiastes 1

Everything Is Meaningless

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

²“Meaningless! Meaningless!”

says the Teacher.

“Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless.”

³What do people gain from all their labors

at which they toil under the sun?

⁴Generations come and generations go,

but the earth remains forever.

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.

⁹What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

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.

Wisdom Is Meaningless

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.

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.