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To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
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He named him Noah and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.”
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If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you.”
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Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression.
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So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.’
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What he toiled for he must give back uneaten; he will not enjoy the profit from his trading.
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he gave them the lands of the nations, and they fell heir to what others had toiled for—
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In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves.
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lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another.
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The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, without painful toil for it.
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What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?
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I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil.
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Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
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Toil Is Meaningless
So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
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I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.
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And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.
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So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.
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For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.
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What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun?
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A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God,
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What do workers gain from their toil?
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That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.
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Oppression, Toil, Friendlessness
Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed— and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors— and they have no comforter.
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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.
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Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.
