1I am Solomon, the son of King David. I rule in Jerusalem and people call me ‘The ◄Preacher/Religious Teacher►’.
2I say that everything is mysterious;
3◄What do people gain from all the work that they do here on the earth?/It seems that people gain no lasting benefit from all the work that they do here on the earth.► [RHQ]
4Each year old people die and babies are born,
5Each morning the sun rises, and each evening it sets,
6The wind blows south,
7All the streams flow into the sea,
8Everything is boring,
9Everything continues to be the same as it has always been;
10Sometimes people say, “Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!”
11People do not remember the things that happened long ago,
12I, the Religious Teacher, have been the king of Israel for many years, ruling in Jerusalem.
13By being wise, I concentrated on understanding everything that was being done on the earth [MTY]. But I found out that God causes all of us to experience things that cause us to be unhappy/miserable.
14It seems that nothing that happens on the earth really enables us to do anything useful. It is like [MET] chasing the wind.
15Many things that are crooked cannot be caused to become straight;
16I said to myself, “Hey, I am wiser than any of the kings that ruled in Jerusalem before I became the king. I am wiser and I know more than any of them!”
17So I determined to learn more about being wise and to learn about knowing about many things, and also to learn about doing things that are very foolish [DOU]. But I found out that trying to understand those things was also useless, like chasing the wind.
18The wiser I became, the more disappointed I became.