Ecclesiastes 1

₁Here are the words that the Preacher said. He was a son of David and he ruled in Jerusalem.

₂The Preacher said: ‘Nothing is like it should be. Everything is useless.’ ₃People work hard, but what do they get for all the work they do in this world? They get nothing. ₄People live and people die, but the earth stays the same forever. ₅The sun comes up and the sun goes down, and it goes fast and quickly to get back to the place where it must come up again. ₆The wind blows to the south and it turns to the north. It turns and turns again and it comes back to where it started. ₇All the rivers flow into the sea but the sea never becomes full. The rivers always flow to the same place. ₈Everything makes people tired, more tired than people can say with all their words. The eye keeps on looking and it never stops. The ear hears and it never stops listening. ₉The things that were there will be there again. People will do the things again that they always did. There is nothing new in this world. ₁₀When someone says: ‘Look, here is something new,’ I say: ‘No, it was there before we were born.’ ₁₁No one remembers what happened long ago and the people who will be born later will also forget what has happened.

₁₂I am the Preacher. I was king_of_Israel in Jerusalem. ₁₃I have tried hard to use my wisdom to understand what all the people in this world are doing. I saw that it is a very difficult work that God has given the people to do. ₁₄I looked at everything that people do in this world and I saw that nothing is as it should be. People are doing things that are useless. It is like trying to catch the wind. ₁₅If something is not straight, you can not make it straight. If there is nothing, you can not count it. ₁₆I thought that I had a lot of wisdom, more than all the other kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. I do have a lot of wisdom and I know a lot of things. ₁₇I have tried hard to understand what wisdom is and what it is to know things. I have also tried to understand what it is like if you are not wise, but you are foolish. Now I know that it is all useless. It is like trying to catch the wind. ₁₈Because if you are very wise, you are worried about a lot of things. If you know a lot, it can make you very sad because you worry too much.