Ecclesiastes 4:3
yea, better than them both [did I esteem] him that hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
American Standard Version
In The King James Version
In Context
2Wherefore I praised the dead that have been long dead more than the living that are yet alive;
Cross References
Job 3:16Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw light.
Job 10:18Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me.
Ecclesiastes 1:14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
Ecclesiastes 6:3If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul be not filled with good, and moreover he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he:
Jeremiah 9:2Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
Matthew 24:19But woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days!
Matthew Henry on Ecclesiastes 4:2-4
The Prevalence of Oppression. 1 So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. 2 Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. 3 Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun. Solomon had a large soul ( 1 Kings… Read the whole commentary →