Ecclesiastes 6:3

Even a man with many children and long life, if he cannot enjoy his good and lacks a proper burial, is worse off than a stillborn child. It matters because length of life and abundance mean nothing without the capacity for joy.

Cross-references · 21

• Job 3:16Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.
• Jer 22:19He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
• 2 Kgs 9:35And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.
• Eccl 4:3Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
• Gen 47:9And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
• Isa 14:19–20But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.
• Jer 8:2And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.
• Esth 7:10So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified.
• Prov 17:6Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.
• Jer 36:30Therefore thus saith the LORD of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.
• Gen 33:5And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant.
• Esth 9:14–15And the king commanded it so to be done: and the decree was given at Shushan; and they hanged Haman’s ten sons.
• Matt 26:24The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.
• Esth 5:11And Haman told them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all the things wherein the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king.
• 2 Chr 11:21And Rehoboam loved Maachah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and his concubines: (for he took eighteen wives, and threescore concubines; and begat twenty and eight sons, and threescore daughters.)
• 1 Sam 2:20–21And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, The LORD give thee seed of this woman for the loan which is lent to the LORD. And they went unto their own home.
• 2 Kgs 10:1And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. And Jehu wrote letters, and sent to Samaria, unto the rulers of Jezreel, to the elders, and to them that brought up Ahab’s children, saying,
• Ps 127:4–5As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
• 1 Chr 28:5And of all my sons, (for the LORD hath given me many sons,) he hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the LORD over Israel.
• Ps 58:8As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
• Eccl 5:17–19All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.

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