What Does Ecclesiastes 5:16 Mean?
And this too is a sickening harm, that just as he comes, so he goes. And what is the surplus to the one who toils for breath?
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
And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?THE KEY
The verse measures toil by what remains when you leave as empty-handed as you arrived.
THE MEANING
You arrive with nothing and leave as you came; the verse asks what remains from all the effort between those two edges. To labor for wind is to spend yourself on what moves through your grasp, so the question of profit turns on what can endure, not how hard you work.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that enough effort can make what is passing permanently possessable.
THE ROOT
יִתְרוֹן
yitron
GROWS FROM
יתר
y-t-r
Remain, be left over, or exceed.
The word for profit carries the sense of a surplus, what is left after everything else is accounted for. The verse asks whether any lasting remainder survives the journey from arrival to departure.
ALSO GROWS
yoter: More, or exceeding.
יוֹתֵר
This is the surplus the verse asks whether labor produces.
yeter: What remains; a remainder.
יֶתֶר
It makes the question concrete: what is left when the worker goes?
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
r-w-ḥ
Wind or breath, the air moving outside or within.
One Hebrew word names wind in the open air and breath within a body. Labor for ruach is aimed at what moves through and cannot be held, giving the verse’s image a living edge.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Wind moving through the air.
רוּחַ
This is the verse’s image of effort directed toward what cannot be possessed.
ruach: Breath moving within a living body.
רוּחַ
The same word joins the passing air outside to the breath that accompanies a person’s life.
יַעֲמֹל
ya'amol
GROWS FROM
עמל
ʿ-m-l
To toil, strain, or wear oneself down through labor.
“toils” in this verse is ya'amol. The root holds both exertion and the hardship it brings. Set beside wind, it makes the verse’s question sharper: the effort is real, but its object slips away.
ALSO GROWS
amal: Toil, hardship, or painful labor.
עָמָל
It names the cost carried in the word translated “laboured.”
amel: A person who toils.
עָמֵל
The branch turns attention from abstract effort to the person who spends themselves on it.
THE PATTERN
Labor and possessions cannot become lasting surplus when the one who gathers them leaves empty-handed.
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.Surely every man walks in a shadow. Surely for vapor they roar. He heaps up, and does not perceive who will gather them.For we brought nothing into the world, and it is clear that we can carry nothing out.THE THREAD
I have seen all the works done under the sun, and look, all is vapor and a herding of breath.The Hebrew ruach (רוּחַ, wind or breath) appears again in the image KJV renders “vexation of spirit.” The repeated word links toil for wind with the larger pattern of work pursuing what moves through one’s grasp.
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