However, it is difficult to give the expression ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ a positive meaning. The emphasis in 1:9–11 is on ‘a paralyzing repetition of the past.’ The twofold repetition of ‘whatever’ in 1:9 reinforces the claim of recurrent phenomena.69 The use of ‘already,’ ‘ancient times,’ and the double use of the verb ‘to be’ (translated ‘has been’) in 1:10, in response to the possibility that something is new, stresses the entrenchment of the past and the impossibility of something