Ecclesiastes 3:13

And I also know that everyone should eat and drink, and enjoy the work that they do. Those are things that God gives to us.

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

In Context

12I know that the best [LIT] thing for us people to do is to rejoice and to do good things all during the time that we are alive.

14I also know that what God does endures forever. No one can add to what God does, and no one can take away from the things that God does. God does those things in order that people would revere him.

Read all of Ecclesiastes 3

Cross References

Deuteronomy 28:30Some of you men will be engaged/promised to marry a young woman, but someone else will rape her. You will build houses, but you will never live in them. You will plant grapevines, but you will not eat the grapes; someone else will eat them.

Judges 6:3Whenever the Israelis planted things in their fields, the people of Midian and Amalek and other groups from the east invaded Israel.

Ecclesiastes 2:24So I decided that the best thing that we can do is to enjoy what we eat and drink, and also enjoy our work. And I realized that those things are what God intends for us.

Ecclesiastes 6:2God enables some people to get a lot of money and possessions and to be honored; they have everything [LIT] that they want. But God sometimes does not allow them to continue to enjoy those things. Someone else gets them and enjoys them. That seems senseless and unfair.

Isaiah 65:21My people will build houses and then live in them. They will plant vineyards and then eat grapes from those vineyards.

Matthew Henry on Ecclesiastes 3:12-16

Mutability of Human Affairs. 11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. 12 I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. 13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. 14 I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

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