What Does Ecclesiastes 3:9 Mean?
What remains over for the one who works in what wearies him?
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 he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?THE KEY
The verse asks whether toil leaves anything behind that can outlast the effort it consumes.
THE MEANING
Your labor is measured here by what remains after the work is done. The question leaves open whether effort produces a lasting surplus or consumes itself in the process.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
More effort does not automatically mean more lasting gain.
THE ROOT
יִתְרוֹן
yitrôn
GROWS FROM
יתר
To remain over, be left, or exceed.
Yitrôn carries the sense of what remains over: the question looks past the amount of work to whatever surplus is left when the toil has run its course. The familiar sense of “profit” sits inside that image of remainder.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: Remainder, excess, or what is left over.
יֶתֶר
It makes the verse’s question concrete: what, if anything, is left after the work?
yoter: More, or exceeding what is there.
יוֹתֵר
It links profit with surplus: the verse asks whether labor yields anything beyond its own cost.
עָמֵל
ʿāmēl
GROWS FROM
עמל
To toil or labor with weariness and trouble.
“wearies him” in this verse is ʿāmēl. This word carries the strain of toil, not just the fact of doing a task. Set beside yitrôn, the verse measures what remains against work that costs the worker something.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmāl: Toil, trouble, or hardship.
עָמָל
The noun holds together effort and its burden, sharpening what the question asks that effort to yield.
ʿāmal: To toil or labor.
עָמַל
The verb form shares the same seed as the noun for toil, keeping the worker and the wear of the work close together.
THE PATTERN
The worth of labor is tested by what remains after its cost, not by effort alone.
What remains to a man from all the toil that he toils under the sun?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?It is emptiness for you to rise up early and sit up late, to eat the bread of pains; for so he gives his beloved sleep.THE THREAD
What remains to a man from all the toil that he toils under the sun?Both verses use יִתְרוֹן (yitrôn, surplus or advantage), from יתר (y-t-r, to remain over). Ecclesiastes 3:9 asks what the worker gains from a particular toil; 1:3 widens the question to all human labor under the sun.
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