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 a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light.
• Jer 22:19He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey, drawn and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.”
• 2 Kgs 9:35They went to bury her, but they found no more of her than the skull, the feet, and the palms of her hands.
• Eccl 4:3Yes, better than them both is him who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
• Gen 47:9Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”
• Isa 14:19–20But you are cast away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; like a dead body trodden under foot.
• Jer 8:2and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the army of the sky, which they have loved, and which they have served, and after which they have walked, and which they have sought, and which they have worshiped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried, they shall be for dung on the surface 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; the glory of children are their parents.
• Jer 36:30Therefore Yahweh says concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: “He will have no one to sit on David’s throne. His dead body will be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.
• Gen 33:5He lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, “Who are these with you?” He said, “The children whom God has graciously given your servant.”
• Esth 9:14–15The king commanded this to be done. A decree was given out in Shushan; and they hanged Haman’s ten sons.
• Matt 26:24The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born.”
• Esth 5:11Haman recounted to them the glory of his riches, the multitude of his children, all the things in which the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king.
• 2 Chr 11:21Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and his concubines; for he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and became the father of twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.
• 1 Sam 2:20–21Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, “May Yahweh give you offspring from this woman for the petition which was asked of Yahweh.” Then they went to their own home.
• 2 Kgs 10:1Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. Jehu wrote letters, and sent to Samaria, to the rulers of Jezreel, even the elders, and to those who brought up Ahab’s sons, saying,
• Ps 127:4–5As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of youth.
• 1 Chr 28:5Of all my sons (for Yahweh has given me many sons), he has chosen Solomon my son to sit on the throne of Yahweh’s kingdom over Israel.
• Ps 58:8Let them be like a snail which melts and passes away, like the stillborn child, who has not seen the sun.
• Eccl 5:17–19All his days he also eats in darkness, he is frustrated, and has sickness and wrath.

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