Ecclesiastes 7:15

The Preacher has seen the righteous perish in their righteousness and the wicked prosper in their evil. It matters because life's apparent injustices challenge simplistic assumptions about reward and punishment.

Cross-references · 20

• Eccl 8:12–14Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him:
• Eccl 6:12For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?
• Ps 73:3–13For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
• Matt 23:34–35Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
• Eccl 9:1–2For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them.
• Eccl 3:16And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there.
• 1 Kgs 21:13And there came in two men, children of Belial, and sat before him: and the men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him with stones, that he died.
• Isa 65:20There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.
• Eccl 2:23For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.
• Eccl 9:9Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.
• Jer 12:1–2Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?
• 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.
• 2 Chr 24:21–22And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the LORD.
• Ps 39:6Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.
• Eccl 5:16–17And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?
• Acts 7:52Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:
• Job 21:7–15Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?
• Job 9:22–23This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.
• 1 Sam 22:18–19And the king said to Doeg, Turn thou, and fall upon the priests. And Doeg the Edomite turned, and he fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod.
• John 16:2They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

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.