What Does Ecclesiastes 10:15 Mean?
The toil of fools wears out the one who does not know how to go to the city.
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
The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city.THE KEY
Effort without knowing the way does not reach the city; it becomes weariness.
THE MEANING
When you spend yourself without knowing where to go, effort becomes its own exhaustion. Even movement toward an ordinary destination depends on knowing the way. The verse shows direction as part of wisdom, not an extra added after the work begins.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that working harder always brings you closer to what you need; labor can increase while the way remains unknown.
THE ROOT
יָדַע
yadaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know or perceive through encounter.
“know” in this verse is yadaʿ. The fool’s lack is more than missing a fact: he does not perceive how to reach the city. The root brings knowing and the way forward together, showing why effort alone cannot supply direction.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge or understanding.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows that the missing knowledge is what would make the next step intelligible.
maddaʿ: Knowledge or understanding.
מַדָּע
This branch keeps the verse’s problem in view: exertion cannot replace knowing what one is doing.
לָלֶכֶת
lalekhet
GROWS FROM
הלך
To go or walk along a way.
“go” in this verse is lalekhet. The verse speaks of going to a real destination, the city. The movement is not the problem by itself; the fool does not know how to direct it there.
ALSO GROWS
halakh: To go or walk.
הָלַךְ
The verb’s basic sense keeps the verse grounded in movement toward a destination.
halikhah: Going, walking, or a journey.
הֲלִיכָה
This branch makes the journey itself visible: movement takes a direction, and direction depends on knowing the way.
תְּיַגְּעֶנּוּ
teyaggeʿennu
GROWS FROM
יגע
To toil or grow weary.
“wears out the one” in this verse is teyaggeʿennu. The root holds toil and weariness together, so the labor’s immediate result is depletion. Beside the failure to know the way, that weariness reveals that energy alone is not arrival.
ALSO GROWS
yagaʿ: To toil or grow weary.
יָגַע
This verb shares the root of the verse’s weariness and joins exertion to its cost.
yegiaʿ: Labor or toil.
יְגִיעַ
This noun shows the same root extending from the act of striving to the labor itself.
yageaʿ: Weary or exhausted.
יָגֵעַ
This adjective names the depleted state that the fool’s labor produces.
THE PATTERN
Effort becomes fruitless when movement outruns knowledge of the way.
Also, a living soul without knowledge is not good, and whoever rushes with his feet misses the mark.O LORD, I perceive that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in a man who walks to set firm his steps.For which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?THE THREAD
The way of the restless is like darkness; they do not perceive what they stumble over.Both verses use ידע (yadaʿ, know or perceive): here, the fool does not know how to go to the city; there, people do not know what makes them stumble. The shared root reveals how not knowing the way can also hide what is happening along it.
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