For you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.
Parallel translations
- WEB for often your own heart knows that you yourself have likewise cursed others.
- KJV For oftentimes also thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed others.
- NKJV For many times, also, your own heart has known That even you have cursed others.
- NASB for you know that even you have cursed others many times as well.
- NLT For you know how often you yourself have cursed others.
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
Your own heart knows you have likewise cursed others many times. It matters because self-awareness of our own faults should make us gracious toward the faults of others.
Overview
The Preacher grounds the previous counsel in honest self-knowledge: we ourselves have spoken ill of others, so we should not be harsh when others do the same. This humbling realism guards against hypocrisy. It anticipates Jesus' teaching to remove the log from our own eye (Matthew 7:1-5) and to forgive as we have been forgiven.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 5
- Jas 3:9With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.
- 1 Kgs 2:44The king also said, “You know in your heart all the evil that you did to my father David. Therefore the LORD will bring your evil back upon your head.
- Matt 15:19For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander.
- Matt 18:32–35Then the master summoned him and declared, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave all your debt because you begged me.
- John 8:7–9When they continued to question Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.”
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 7:22 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
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