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.
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.
- BSB But better than both is he who has not yet existed, who has not seen the evil 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 23:29For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.
- Matt 24:19And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
- Eccl 6:3–5If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.
- Job 10:18–19Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
- Jer 20:17–18Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me.
- Jer 9:2–3Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
- Job 3:10–16Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
- Job 3:22Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?
- Ps 55:6–11And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.
- Eccl 2:17Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
- Eccl 1:14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
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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.