Ecclesiastes 1 — AAB

Everything Is Futile

1These are the words of the Teacher,⁺the son of David, king in Jerusalem:²“Vapor⁺of vapors,”says the Teacher,“vapor of vapors!Everything is vapor!”³What does a man gain from all his labor,at which he toils under the sun?⁴Generations come and generations go,but the earth remains forever.⁵The sun rises and the sun sets;it hurries back to where it rises.⁶The wind blows southward,then turns northward;round and round it swirls,ever returning on its course.⁷All the rivers flow into the sea,yet the sea is never full;to the place from which the streams come,there again they flow.⁸All things are wearisome,more than one can describe;the eye is not satisfied with seeing,nor the ear content with hearing.⁹What has been will be again,and what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.¹⁰Is there a case where one can say,“Look, this is new”?It has already existedin the ages before us.¹¹There is no remembranceof those who came before,and those yet to come will not be rememberedby those who follow after.

With Wisdom Comes Sorrow

¹²I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.¹³And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a miserable task God has laid upon the sons of men to occupy them!¹⁴I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and have found them all to be vapor, a pursuit of the wind.¹⁵What is crooked cannot be straightened,and what is lacking cannot be counted.¹⁶I said to myself, “Behold, I have grown and increased in wisdom beyond all those before me who were over Jerusalem, and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.”¹⁷So I set my mind to know wisdom and madness and folly; I learned that this, too, is a pursuit of the wind.¹⁸For with much wisdom comes much sorrow,and as knowledge grows, grief increases.