Ecclesiastes 6:3

If a man has a hundred children, and his life is long so that the days of his years are great in number, but his soul takes no pleasure in good, and he is not honoured at his death; I say that a birth before its time is better than he.

Bible in Basic English

In The King James Version

If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

In Context

2A man to whom God gives money, wealth, and honour so that he has all his desires but God does not give him the power to have joy of it, and a strange man takes it. This is to no purpose and an evil disease.

4In wind it came and to the dark it will go, and with the dark will its name be covered.

Read all of Ecclesiastes 6

Cross References

Genesis 47:9And Jacob said, The years of my wanderings have been a hundred and thirty; small in number and full of sorrow have been the years of my life, and less than the years of the wanderings of my fathers.

2 Kings 9:35And they went out to put her body into the earth, but nothing of her was to be seen, only the bones of her head, and her feet, and parts of her hands.

1 Chronicles 28:5And of all my sons (for the Lord has given me a great number of sons) he has made selection of Solomon to take his place on the seat of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.

Esther 5:11And he gave them an account of the glories of his wealth, and the number of children he had, and the ways in which he had been honoured by the king, and how he had put him over the captains and servants of the king.

Esther 9:14And the king said that this was to be done, and the order was given out in Shushan, and the hanging of Haman's ten sons was effected.

Job 3:16Or as a child dead at birth I might never have come into existence; like young children who have not seen the light.

Matthew Henry on Ecclesiastes 6:2-7

The Miseries of Covetousness. 1 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men: 2 A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease. 3 If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I… Read the whole commentary →

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