What Does Ecclesiastes 5:13 Mean?
There is a sickening harm I have seen under the sun, wealth guarded for its owners to their harm.
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
There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats the same root for “evil” and “hurt”: the harm to the owner is the very evil the verse names.
THE MEANING
Riches can be guarded and still become an injury to the person who owns them. The Hebrew uses the same word-family for the opening “evil” and the ending “hurt,” joining the condition and its consequence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wealth kept safely must be keeping its owner safe.
THE ROOT
רָעָה
ra'ah
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad or bring harm.
“evil / hurt” in this verse is ra'ah. The KJV gives “evil” and “hurt” as separate ideas, while the Hebrew repeats the same root. The verse’s evil is not merely that riches exist: the harm to their owner is part of what that evil means.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This form echoes the verse’s opening diagnosis: “a sore evil.”
ra'ah: Evil, harm, or calamity.
רָעָה
This form appears again in “to their hurt,” linking the named evil to its effect on the owner.
שָׁמוּר
shamur
GROWS FROM
שמר
sh-m-r
To guard, keep, or watch over.
The riches are not merely present; they are being guarded. This root carries the sense of watchful keeping, giving the verse’s image an active quality.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Keeper or watchman.
שֹׁמֵר
This branch names the one who watches over something, making the vigilance inside “kept” visible.
mishmeret: Guard duty, charge, or watch.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch shows keeping as an ongoing watch, not simply ownership.
THE PATTERN
What is guarded for its owner’s security can become harm to the owner.
One scatters and yet increases, and another keeps back beyond the straight, but only toward lack.Do not store up for yourselves treasures upon the ground, where moth and rust gnaw them out of sight, and where thieves dig through and steal.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
And the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.“Keep” here is the same Hebrew root, שמר (shamar), meaning to guard or watch over, as “kept” in Ecclesiastes. Genesis joins this keeping to tending a garden; Ecclesiastes joins it to riches that harm their owner, placing two objects of vigilance side by side.
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