Douay-Rheims Challoner Revision 1752

Ecclesiastes 2:14-23 Douay-Rheims Challoner Revision 1752 (DRC1752)

14. The eyes of a wise man are in his head: the fool walketh in darkness: and I learned that they were to die both alike.

15. And I said in my heart: If the death of the fool and mine shall be one, what doth it avail me, that I have applied myself more to the study of wisdom? And speaking with my own mind, I perceived that this also was vanity.

16. For there shall be no remembrance of the wise no more than of the fool for ever, and the times to come shall cover all things together with oblivion: the learned dieth in like manner as the unlearned.

17. And therefore I was weary of my life, when I saw that all things under the sun are evil, and all vanity and vexation of spirit.

18. Again I hated all my application wherewith I had earnestly laboured under the sun, being like to have an heir after me,

19. Whom I know not whether he will be a wise man or a fool, and he shall have rule over all my labours with which I have laboured and been solicitous: and is there any thing so vain?

20. Wherefore I left off and my heart renounced labouring any more under the sun.

21. For when a man laboureth in wisdom, and knowledge, and carefulness, he leaveth what he hath gotten to an idle man: so this also is vanity, and a great evil.

22. For what profit shall a man have of all his labour, and vexation of spirit, with which he bath been tormented under the sun?

23. All his days axe full of sorrows and miseries, even in the night he doth not rest in mind: and is not this vanity?