For many times, also, your own heart has known That even you 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.
- BSB For you know in your heart that many times you yourself 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 it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the image of God.
- 1 Kgs 2:44The king said moreover to Shimei, “You know in your heart all the wickedness that you did to David my father. Therefore Yahweh will return your wickedness on your own head.
- Matt 15:19For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies.
- Matt 18:32–35Then his lord called him in, and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me.
- John 8:7–9But when they continued asking him, he looked up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her.”
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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
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.