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1:1  When the son of David was king in Jerusalem, he was known to be very wise, and he said:
1:2  Nothing makes sense! Everything is nonsense. I have seen it all— nothing makes sense!
1:3  What is there to show for all of our hard work here on this earth?
1:4  People come, and people go, but still the world never changes.
1:5  The sun comes up, the sun goes down; it hurries right back to where it started from.
1:6  The wind blows south, the wind blows north; round and round it blows over and over again.
1:7  All rivers empty into the sea, but it never spills over; one by one the rivers return to their source.
1:8  All of life is far more boring than words could ever say. Our eyes and our ears are never satisfied with what we see and hear.
1:9  Everything that happens has happened before; nothing is new, nothing under the sun.
1:10  Someone might say, “Here is something new!” But it happened before, long before we were born.
1:11  No one who lived in the past is remembered anymore, and everyone yet to be born will be forgotten too.
1:12  I said these things when I lived in Jerusalem as king of Israel.
1:13  With all my wisdom I tried to understand everything that happens here on earth. And God has made this so hard for us humans to do.
1:14  I have seen it all, and everything is just as senseless as chasing the wind.
1:15  If something is crooked, it can't be made straight; if something isn't there, it can't be counted.
1:16  I said to myself, “You are by far the wisest person who has ever lived in Jerusalem. You are eager to learn, and you have learned a lot.”
1:17  Then I decided to find out all I could about wisdom and foolishness. Soon I realized that this too was as senseless as chasing the wind.
1:18  The more you know, the more you hurt; the more you understand, the more you suffer.