What Does Ecclesiastes 2:20 Mean?
So I turned around, and made my heart despair of all the toil I had toiled 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
Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.THE KEY
Hebrew says “the toil I toiled,” making despair encompass both the work and the act of working.
THE MEANING
Your heart can look across all the work you have poured into life beneath the sun and feel despair about it. The verse lets that judgment remain stark: the labor itself has become something your heart cannot find hope in.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that enough effort guarantees lasting fulfillment dissolves here: a life can be full of labor while the heart despairs over it.
THE ROOT
הֶעָמָל שֶׁעָמַלְתִּי
heʿāmāl šeʿāmaltî
GROWS FROM
ע־מ־ל
ʿ-m-l
Toil, labor, exert oneself under strain.
Hebrew repeats עמל as both noun and verb: “the toil I toiled.” That repetition makes despair reach the effort itself as well as its result.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmāl: Toil, labor, trouble (noun).
עָמָל
This is the labor the heart surveys and despairs over.
ʿāmaltî: I toiled (verb, first person).
עָמַלְתִּי
This is the same root as the noun, binding the toil to the speaker’s own act of working.
לְיַאֵשׁ
lĕyaʾēš
GROWS FROM
י־א־שׁ
y-ʾ-sh
To despair, abandon hope; in this form, to cause despair.
The verse describes the heart as the object of an active turning toward despair. Its wording lets the reader see how fully the labor has come to weigh on the inner life.
ALSO GROWS
yāʾash: To despair or give up hope (verb).
יָאַשׁ
This is the basic loss of hope named in the verse.
lĕyaʾēš: To cause to despair, bring to hopelessness (Piel infinitive).
לְיַאֵשׁ
This is the form used here as the speaker turns toward making the heart despair over all the toil.
THE PATTERN
All the labor gathered under the sun still leaves the heart asking what can endure.
What remains to a man from all the toil that he toils under the sun?Surely every man walks in a shadow. Surely for vapor they roar. He heaps up, and does not perceive who will gather them.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
For what is there for the person in all his toil, and in the herding of his heart, in which he toils under the sun?Both verses use עָמָל (ʿāmāl, toil) and עָמַל (ʿāmal, to toil), the noun and action grown from one root. Here the next verse turns the heart’s despair into the question of what remains from all that labor.
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