What Does Ecclesiastes 2:20 Mean in the King James?
Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.
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
Hebrew says “the toil I toiled,” making despair encompass both the work and the act of working.
THE MEANING
Your heart can look across all the work you have poured into life beneath the sun and feel despair about it. The verse lets that judgment remain stark: the labor itself has become something your heart cannot find hope in.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that enough effort guarantees lasting fulfillment dissolves here: a life can be full of labor while the heart despairs over it.
THE ROOT
הֶעָמָל שֶׁעָמַלְתִּי
heʿāmāl šeʿāmaltî
GROWS FROM
ע־מ־ל
ʿ-m-l
Toil, labor, exert oneself under strain.
“labour” in this verse is heʿāmāl šeʿāmaltî. Hebrew repeats עמל as both noun and verb: “the toil I toiled.” That repetition makes despair reach the effort itself as well as its result.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmāl: Toil, labor, trouble (noun).
עָמָל
This is the labor the heart surveys and despairs over.
ʿāmaltî: I toiled (verb, first person).
עָמַלְתִּי
This is the same root as the noun, binding the toil to the speaker’s own act of working.
לְיַאֵשׁ
lĕyaʾēš
GROWS FROM
י־א־שׁ
y-ʾ-sh
To despair, abandon hope; in this form, to cause despair.
The verse describes the heart as the object of an active turning toward despair. Its wording lets the reader see how fully the labor has come to weigh on the inner life.
ALSO GROWS
yāʾash: To despair or give up hope (verb).
יָאַשׁ
This is the basic loss of hope named in the verse.
lĕyaʾēš: To cause to despair, bring to hopelessness (Piel infinitive).
לְיַאֵשׁ
This is the form used here as the speaker turns toward making the heart despair over all the toil.
THE PATTERN
All the labor gathered under the sun still leaves the heart asking what can endure.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?THE THREAD
For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?Both verses use עָמָל (ʿāmāl, toil) and עָמַל (ʿāmal, to toil), the noun and action grown from one root. Here the next verse turns the heart’s despair into the question of what remains from all that labor.
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