So then, I have seen the wicked buried, those who used to go in and out of the holy place, and they are soon forgotten in the city where they did such things. This too is futility.
Parallel translations
- WEB So I saw the wicked buried. Indeed they came also from holiness. They went and were forgotten in the city where they did this. This also is vanity.
- KJV And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity.
- BSB Then too, I saw the burial of the wicked who used to go in and out of the holy place, and they were praised in the city where they had done so. This too is futile.
- NKJV Then I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of holiness, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done. This also is vanity.
- NLT I have seen wicked people buried with honor. Yet they were the very ones who frequented the Temple and are now praised in the same city where they committed their crimes! This, too, is meaningless.
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
The Preacher saw the wicked honored in burial and soon forgotten, calling this too a vanity. The seeming success of evildoers is fleeting and ultimately empty.
Overview
This verse is textually difficult, but its thrust is that the wicked sometimes receive honorable funerals and praise in the very place they did evil, while their memory quickly fades. The injustice of it strikes Qoheleth as vanity. It sets up the assurance, despite appearances, that God's final judgment will set things right (Psalm 73:17-20).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Eccl 2:16For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no memory for ever, since in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. Indeed, the wise man must die just like the fool!
- Eccl 9:5For the living know that they will die, but the dead don’t know anything, neither do they have any more a reward; for their memory is forgotten.
- Prov 10:7The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.
- Eccl 1:11There is no memory of the former; neither shall there be any memory of the latter that are to come, among those that shall come after.
- Acts 6:13and set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking blasphemous words against this holy place and the law.
- Jer 17:13Yahweh, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be disappointed. Those who depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken Yahweh, the spring of living waters.
- Job 21:18How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away?
- Ps 31:12I am forgotten from their hearts like a dead man. I am like broken pottery.
- Job 21:32–33Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men shall keep watch over the tomb.
- Luke 16:22The beggar died, and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried.
- Heb 10:38But the righteous will live by faith. If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”
- 2 Kgs 9:34–35When he had come in, he ate and drank. Then he said, “See now to this cursed woman, and bury her; for she is a king’s daughter.”
- Ps 122:1–5A Song of Ascents. By David. I was glad when they said to me, “Let’s go to Yahweh’s house!”
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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 8:10 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.