What Does Ecclesiastes 9:3 Mean?
This is the evil among all that is done under the sun, that there is one meeting for all. Also the heart of humankind is filled with evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and afterward they go to the dead.
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
This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.THE KEY
What English calls an event is a meeting every person shares: death arrives while the living heart is still full of evil and madness.
THE MEANING
Every person living now moves toward the same end; no one stands outside it. While life continues, the human heart is full of evil and madness, and afterward that person joins the dead.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a person’s moral standing exempts them from death is undone: the same end comes to all.
THE ROOT
מִקְרֶה
miqreh
GROWS FROM
קרה
qarah
To meet, happen, or befall.
“one meeting for all” in this verse is miqreh. The Hebrew word translated “event” comes from a root that can mean to meet or befall. English presents a thing that happens to everyone; the root lets us hear death as the encounter that comes to all.
ALSO GROWS
miqreh: An event or occurrence.
מִקְרֶה
This is the word the verse uses for the one event shared by all.
qarah: To happen, befall, or meet.
קָרָה
The verb reveals the event as something that meets or comes upon a person.
הוֹלֵלוֹת
holēlōt
GROWS FROM
הלל
halal
Praise or exult; this form carries the sense of raving or madness.
The Hebrew word for madness shares its root with halal, the word for praise. This form means raving, bringing a forceful, ungoverned intensity into the verse’s picture of the living heart.
ALSO GROWS
halal: Praise, boast, or exult.
הָלַל
This familiar branch of the root stands beside the verse’s word for madness.
holel: Raving or acting madly.
הוֹלֵל
This related form gives the heart’s madness a sense of ungoverned intensity.
THE PATTERN
The living share a mortal end, regardless of how they imagine their distinction.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you turn back to the ground, for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall turn back.Therefore, as through one man falling short entered into the world, and death through it; and so death passed through to all people, because all have missed the mark.And as it is laid up for people to die once, and after this, judgment.THE THREAD
For what meets the children of humankind also meets the beast, and one encounter is theirs. As this one dies, so that one dies, and they all have one breath. Humankind has no remainder above the beast, for all is vapor.The word translated “event” in Ecclesiastes 9:3 is מִקְרֶה (miqreh), from קָרָה (qarah), “to happen, befall, meet”; the same Hebrew word is translated “befalleth” here. This verse extends the shared encounter to animals too, and its “one breath” is רוּחַ (ruach), breath.
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