But better than both is he who has not yet existed, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.
Parallel translations
- WEB Yes, better than them both is him who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
- KJV Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
- NKJV Yet, better than both is he who has never existed, Who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
- NASB But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun.
- NLT But most fortunate of all are those who are not yet born. For they have not seen all the evil that is done under the sun.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Better still, he says, is the one not yet born who has not witnessed evil. Life's injustice seems so grievous that never existing appears preferable.
Overview
Qoheleth intensifies his lament, declaring the unborn fortunate for never having seen the world's evil. This is rhetorical despair that dramatizes the heaviness of life under oppression, not a denial of life's value. Such candor about suffering drives the reader to long for the redemption and final justice that God alone provides through Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Luke 23:29Look, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!’
- Matt 24:19How miserable those days will be for pregnant and nursing mothers!
- Eccl 6:3–5A man may father a hundred children and live for many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he is unsatisfied with his prosperity and does not even receive a proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.
- Job 10:18–19Why then did You bring me from the womb? Oh, that I had died, and no eye had seen me!
- Jer 20:17–18because he did not kill me in the womb so that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb forever enlarged.
- Jer 9:2–3If only I had a traveler’s lodge in the wilderness, I would abandon my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, a crowd of faithless people.
- Job 3:10–16For that night did not shut the doors of the womb to hide the sorrow from my eyes.
- Job 3:22who rejoice and greatly exult when they can find the grave?
- Ps 55:6–11I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and find rest.
- Eccl 2:17So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. For everything is futile and a pursuit of the wind.
- Eccl 1:14I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and have found them all to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The search that finds everything 'under the sun' to be vapor exposes the emptiness of life without God and drives us to the one who alone gives meaning, the resurrection that makes our labor not in vain.
How Ecclesiastes 4:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.