Ecclesiastes 6
1 I have seen something [else here] on this earth that troubles people.
There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it [is] great on man:
2 God enables some people to get a lot of money and possessions and to be honored; they have everything [LIT] that they want. But God [sometimes] does not allow them to continue to enjoy those things. Someone else gets them and enjoys them. That seems senseless and unfair.
A man to whom God gives wealth, and riches, and honor, and there is no lack to his soul of all that he desires, and God does not give him power to eat of it, but a stranger eats it; this [is] vanity, and it [is] an evil disease.
3 Someone might have 100 children and live for many years. But if he is not able to enjoy the things that he has acquired, and if he is not buried [properly after he dies], [I say that] a child that is dead when it is born is more fortunate.
If a man begets one hundred, and lives many years, and is great, because they are the days of his years, and his soul is not satisfied from the goodness, and also he has not had a grave, I have said, “Better than he [is] the untimely birth.”
4 That dead baby’s birth is meaningless; it does not even have a name. It goes directly to the place where there is only darkness.
For in vanity he came in, and in darkness he goes, and in darkness his name is covered,
5 It does not [live to] see the sun or know anything. But it finds more rest than rich people do [who are alive].
even the sun he has not seen nor known, more rest has this than that.
6 Even if people could live for 2,000 years, if they do not enjoy the things that God gives to them, [it would have been better for them never to have been born]. [All people who live a long time] certainly [RHQ] all go to the same place— [to the grave].
And though he had lived one thousand years twice over, yet he has not seen good; does not everyone go to the same place?
7 People work hard to [earn enough money to buy] food to eat [MTY], but [often] they never get enough to eat.
All the labor of man [is] for his mouth, And yet the soul is not filled.
8 So it seems that [RHQ] wise people do not receive more lasting benefits than foolish people do. And it seems that [RHQ] poor people do not benefit from knowing how to conduct their lives.
For what advantage [is] to the wise above the fool? What to the poor who knows to walk before the living?
9 It is better to enjoy the things that we already have [MTY] than to constantly want more things; continually wanting more things is [senseless], [like] the wind.
Better [is] the sight of the eyes than the going of the soul. This [is] also vanity and distress of spirit.
10 All the things that exist [on the earth] have been given names. And everyone knows what people are like, [so] it is useless to argue with someone (OR, with God) who is stronger than we are.
What [is] that which has been? Already is its name called, and it is known that it [is] man, And he is not able to contend with him who is stronger than he.
11 The more [that we] talk, the more [often we say things that are] senseless, so it certainly does not [RHQ] benefit us to talk a lot.
For there are many things multiplying vanity; What advantage [is] to man?
12 We live for only a short time; we disappear like [SIM] a shadow disappears [in the sunlight]. No one [RHQ] knows what is best for us while we are alive, and no one [RHQ] knows what will happen to us after we die [EUP].
For who knows what [is] good for a man in life, the number of the days of the life of his vanity, and he makes them as a shadow? For who declares to man what is after him under the sun?
