What Does Ecclesiastes 1:11 Mean in the King James?
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Human memory is not the vessel that makes a life or an age endure.
THE MEANING
What came before you and what comes after you both fade from the memory of later generations. Your present does not sit inside an unbroken human record; even what feels permanent can pass beyond those who follow. The verse names the limit of remembrance without saying that what is forgotten never mattered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Your life must be remembered by those who come after you for it to have mattered. This verse loosens the belief that endurance in human memory gives a life its meaning.
THE ROOT
זִכָּרוֹן
zikkārôn
GROWS FROM
זכר
z-k-r
To remember, call to mind, or mention.
English can make remembrance sound like a private thought, but זִכָּרוֹן (zikaron) also names a memorial: what is called to mind and kept in view. The verse says that this shared record fades across generations, even as the root holds remembering and memorializing together.
ALSO GROWS
zāḵar: To remember, call to mind, or mention.
זָכַר
The verb behind “remembrance” shows that the fading described here is an active human act of recalling and speaking of what came before.
zēḵer: Remembrance, memorial, or mention.
זֵכֶר
This noun makes the public side of the root visible: what a generation remembers becomes a memorial, yet even that can disappear from those who follow.
THE PATTERN
Human generations cannot preserve a full and lasting record of what has been.
For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.THE THREAD
And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;The word translated “remembrance” here is זִכָּרוֹן (zikaron), from זכר (z-k-r); Genesis uses that same root when God “remembered” Noah. In Ecclesiastes, human memorials fade; in Genesis, remembering is followed by a change in what unfolds, revealing the root’s range through its speaker and effect.
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