What Does Ecclesiastes 4:9 Mean?
Two are better than one, because they have good wages for their toil.
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
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.THE KEY
The verse calls the return of shared labor a reward, making togetherness part of the work’s fruit.
THE MEANING
Your labor can have a better return when it is shared; companionship is part of how fruitful work takes shape. The verse speaks to the work in your hands now: two can produce a good return together that one may not reach alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that self-reliance always produces the strongest result: some labor bears its good return through partnership.
THE ROOT
שָׂכָר
sākār
GROWS FROM
שכר
To hire or recompense; payment given in return for service.
“good wages” in this verse is sākār. The word שָׂכָר (sākār, wages or reward) can make “reward” sound like a prize paid later. Its wage sense keeps the return concrete: shared effort itself carries a good return.
ALSO GROWS
sākhar: To hire or pay wages.
שָׂכַר
The verb ties recompense directly to work performed, giving “reward for their labour” a concrete texture.
sākhîr: A hired worker.
שָׂכִיר
The person who works and the payment for that work belong to the same word family.
טוֹב
tov
GROWS FROM
טוב
Good, beneficial, or pleasing.
The word טוֹב (tov, good) describes the return of shared labor here and the goodness of dwelling together in Psalm 133:1. The same word links the fruit of working together with the goodness of shared life.
ALSO GROWS
tuv: Goodness, benefit, or bounty.
טוּב
It shows “good” as something experienced as benefit, like the return attached to shared work.
tovah: A good thing or benefit.
טוֹבָה
It keeps the word family’s goodness concrete, rather than merely describing an abstract quality.
THE PATTERN
Shared effort can multiply strength and carry a return that isolated work may not produce.
How should one pursue a thousand, and two make ten thousand run, unless their rock has sold them, and the LORD has handed them over?And if one overpowers him, two will stand against him, and a threefold cord is not quickly torn.The one who plants and the one who gives to drink are one, and each one will take his own wage according to his own toil.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees of David. Look, how good and how sweet it is for brothers to settle also together!The Hebrew word טוֹב (tov, good) appears in both verses: it names the return of shared labor here and the goodness of dwelling together in Psalm 133:1. Ecclesiastes locates that goodness in the fruit of working together; the Psalm extends it to shared life itself.
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