Money is put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one’s children.
Parallel translations
- WEB Those riches perish by misfortune, and if he has fathered a son, there is nothing in his hand.
- KJV But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand.
- BSB or wealth lost in a failed venture, so when that man has a son there is nothing to pass on.
- NKJV But those riches perish through misfortune; When he begets a son, there is nothing in his hand.
- NASB When that wealth was lost through bad business and he had fathered a son, then there was nothing to support him.
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
Hoarded riches can be lost through misfortune, leaving even a man's son with nothing to inherit. It matters because earthly wealth is fragile and offers no guaranteed security.
Overview
The Preacher illustrates how quickly fortunes vanish through a 'bad venture' or calamity, leaving heirs empty-handed. The instability of riches exposes the folly of trusting them. This realism prepares the reader to seek a more enduring inheritance, the imperishable inheritance kept in heaven for those who belong to Christ (1 Peter 1:4).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Eccl 2:26For to the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he gives travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him who pleases God. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.
- Matt 6:19–20“Don’t lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal;
- Hag 2:16–17Through all that time, when one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty, there were only twenty.
- Job 20:15–29He has swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again. God will cast them out of his belly.
- Job 5:5whose harvest the hungry eats up, and take it even out of the thorns. The snare gapes for their substance.
- Prov 23:5Why do you set your eyes on that which is not? For it certainly sprouts wings like an eagle and flies in the sky.
- Hag 1:9“You looked for much, and, behold, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says Yahweh of Armies, “Because of my house that lies waste, while each of you is busy with his own house.
- 1 Sam 2:36It will happen, that everyone who is left in your house will come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread, and will say, “Please put me into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat a morsel of bread.”’”
- Job 27:16–17Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare clothing as the clay;
- 1 Kgs 14:26and he took away the treasures of Yahweh’s house, and the treasures of the king’s house. He even took away all of it, including all the gold shields which Solomon had made.
- 1 Sam 2:6–8“Yahweh kills, and makes alive. He brings down to Sheol, and brings up.
- Ps 39:6“Surely every man walks like a shadow. Surely they busy themselves in vain. He heaps up, and doesn’t know who shall gather.
- Ps 109:9–12Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 5:14 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.