What Does Ecclesiastes 1:3 Mean?
What remains to a man from all the toil that he toils under the sun?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?THE KEY
The question is not how much you work, but what remains after all that work is spent.
THE MEANING
Your work can fill your days and still leave open the question of what actually remains from it. This verse measures effort by its net remainder, not its volume, and asks what labor yields across the span of a life. It speaks whenever accumulated work feels real but its lasting gain is uncertain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that effort automatically becomes lasting gain: a life can be full of work while its net remainder stays uncertain.
THE ROOT
יִתְרוֹן
yitrôn
GROWS FROM
יתר
y-t-r
The Hebrew root יָתַר (yāṯar) means to remain, be left over, or exceed; יִתְרוֹן (yitrôn) names what remains as surplus or advantage.
The question turns on what is left over after the labor, not simply how much labor is done. The English word “profit” can sound like a reward; the root brings the sharper question of what, if anything, remains.
ALSO GROWS
yoter: more, greater, or beyond
יוֹתֵר
This branch echoes the idea of excess: the verse asks whether all the toil yields anything beyond the toil itself.
yeter: remainder, what is left over
יֶתֶר
This is the verse’s underlying measure: what remains when the work has been spent?
עָמָל
ʿāmāl
GROWS FROM
עמל
ʿ-m-l
The Hebrew root עָמַל (ʿāmal) means to toil or labor under strain; עָמָל names toil or hardship.
The Hebrew repeats this root in “all his toil that he toils”, the work is named as both the burden and the act. That echo makes the question press on labor that consumes itself without necessarily leaving a surplus.
ALSO GROWS
yaʿămōl: he toils
יַעֲמֹל
This is the verb behind “which he taketh”; paired with עָמָל, it repeats the same root as noun and action.
ʿāmēl: one who toils, a laboring person
עָמֵל
This branch shows how the root can name the person shaped by the work, as well as the work itself.
THE PATTERN
Work measured only by what it leaves behind cannot guarantee lasting surplus.
Then I turned my face to all the works my hands had made, and to the toil I had toiled to make. And behold, all is vapor and a herding of breath, and there is no remainder under the sun.A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.For what does it profit a human, if he gains the whole world and is damaged in his living soul? Or what will a human give in exchange for his living soul?THE THREAD
What remains over for the one who works in what wearies him?This verse repeats יִתְרוֹן (yitrôn, surplus or advantage) and עָמָל (ʿāmāl, toil), returning to the same question. The echo makes clear that the question follows labor across life’s changing seasons.
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