1. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it is prevalent among men.
2. A man whom God gives riches and property and honor, and his soul lacks nothing of all he desires, and God gives him no power to eat of it, but a strange man eats it; this is vanity and a grievous sickness.
3. Should a man beget one hundred [children] and live many years, and he will have much throughout the days of his years, but his soul will not be sated from all the good, neither did he have burial. I said that the stillborn is better than he.
4. For he comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness his name is covered.
5. Moreover, he did not see the sun nor did he know [it]; this one has more gratification than that one.
6. And if he had lived a thousand years twice and experienced no pleasure, do not all go to one place?
7. All of a person's toil is for his mouth, and is the appetite not yet sated?
8. For what is the advantage of the wise over the fool? What [less] has the poor man who knows how to go along with the living?
9. Better is what he sees with his eyes than that which goes to sate his appetite; this too is vanity and frustration.
10. What was, its name was already called, and it is known that he is a man, and he will not be able to strive with him who is stronger than he.
11. For there are many things that increase vanity; what will remain for a man?
12. For who knows what is good for man in his lifetime, the number of the days of his life of vanity, that he do them like a shadow, for who will tell man what will be after him under the sun?
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