What Does Ecclesiastes 5:15 Mean?
As he comes from his mother's womb, naked he turns back to go as he comes. He lifts nothing from his toil that he can go away with in his hand.
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
As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.THE KEY
The hand marks the limit: all you gather through labor remains yours only for the span of your life.
THE MEANING
You arrive with nothing in your hands, and you leave the same way. What you gain through effort can fill your life, but it does not cross its final boundary with you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what you earn becomes yours to keep simply because you worked for it.
THE ROOT
יִשָּׂא
yiśśāʾ from nāśāʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
nśʾ
to lift, carry, or bear
“lifts” in this verse is yiśśāʾ from nāśāʾ. The verb translated “take” belongs to a root of lifting and bearing. The verse pictures the limit plainly: what your hand cannot carry beyond life stays behind, however much labor went into gathering it.
ALSO GROWS
maśśāʾ: A load carried or borne
מַשָּׂא
The shared root brings labor and its results into the language of what a person bears.
nāśîʾ: A leader or elevated person
נָשִׂיא
Even elevation is expressed through the image of being lifted; the root keeps returning to what can be raised or carried.
THE PATTERN
What is gathered during life does not cross the boundary of death with the one who gathered it.
For in his dying he takes nothing, and his weight does not go down after him.For we brought nothing into the world, and it is clear that we can carry nothing out.THE THREAD
And he said, Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I will turn back there. The LORD gave, and the LORD took; blessed be the name of the LORD.Job gives the same image of arrival and return with empty hands. Ecclesiastes holds that limit beside the work of a whole life: what labor gathers still remains behind.
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