Douay Rheims Original ↷
Ecclesiastes 1 📜 📕 ↷
Everything Is Futile
1 THE words of Ecclesiastes, the son of David, king of Jerusalem.📜💬📚
2 Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes: vanity of vanities, and all things are vanity.📜💬📚
3 What hath a man more of all his labour, whereby he laboureth under the sun?📜💬📚
4 Generation passeth, and generation cometh: but the earth standeth for ever.📜💬📚
5 The sun riseth, and goeth down, and returneth to his place: and there rising again,📜💬📚
6 compasseth by the South, and bendeth to the North: compassing all things, goeth forward in circuit, & returneth unto his circles.📜💬📚
7 All rivers enter into the sea, and the sea overfloweth not: to the place, whence the rivers issue forth, they do return, that they may flow again.📜💬📚
8 All things are hard: man can not explicate them in word. The eye is not filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing.📜💬📚
9 What is that hath been? The same thing that shall be. What is that hath been done? The same that is to be done.📜💬📚
10 Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us.📜💬📚
11 There is no memory of former things: but neither of those things verily, which hereafter are to come, shall there be remembrance with them, that shall be in the later end.📜💬📚
With Wisdom Comes Sorrow
12 I, Ecclesiastes have been king of Israel in Jerusalem,📜💬📚
13 and have proposed in my mind to seek and search wisely of all things, that are done under the sun. This very evil occupation hath God given to the children of men, that they might be occupied in it.📜💬📚
14 I have seen all things, that are done under the sun, and behold all are vanity, & affliction of spirit.📜💬📚
15 The perverse are hardly corrected, and the number of fools is infinite.📜💬📚
16 I have spoken in my heart, saying: Lo I have been made great, and have gone beyond all in wisdom, that were before me in Jerusalem: and my mind hath contemplated many things wisely, and I have learned.📜💬📚
17 And I have given my heart to know prudence, and doctrine, and errors, and folly: and I have perceived that in these also there was labour, and affliction of spirit,📜💬📚
18 for that in much wisdom there is much indignation: and he that addeth knowledge, addeth also labour.📜💬📚
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