¹³ I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens.^(A) What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind!^(B)

¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.^(A)

¹⁷ Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom,^(A) and also of madness and folly,^(B) but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

¹⁶ When I applied my mind to know wisdom^(A) and to observe the labor that is done on earth^(B)—people getting no sleep day or night— ¹⁷ then I saw all that God has done.^(C) No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.^(D)

¹⁵ Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.

¹² Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.

Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.^(A)

⁹ All this I saw, as I applied my mind to everything done under the sun. There is a time when a man lords it over others to his own^[a] hurt.

⁴ And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.^(A)