⁴ A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth keeps standing forever. ⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets. It hurries back, panting and out of breath, to its starting point, where it rises again. ⁶ The wind goes round and round. Blowing south, then blowing north, the wind keeps going around in circles. ⁷ All streams keep flowing to the sea, but the sea is never full. The streams keep coming back to the same place, and then they flow out again.

⁸ Everything is tedious and tiresome, more than one can tell. No eye ever sees enough, and no ear ever gets its fill of hearing.

⁹ Whatever has been is what will be again, and whatever has already been done is what will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. ¹⁰ Is there a single thing about which one can say, “Look, this is new”? It was already here ages ago, long before us. ¹¹ No one remembers the people who^[a] came before us, and as for those who are coming—after they are gone, no one will remember them either.