What Does Ecclesiastes 2:4 Mean in the King James?
I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards:
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
The verse gathers great works, houses, and vineyards around one center: what can you build and grow for yourself?
THE MEANING
You recognize the impulse to enlarge your life through work, shelter, and what you cultivate. The repeated “for myself” turns each project toward the same center: the outer world grows while the question of what that growth gives the self remains.
THE ROOT
הִגְדַּלְתִּי
higdalti
GROWS FROM
גדל
gadal
To grow, become great, or increase in size.
The verb means “I made great” or “I enlarged,” so greatness is something the speaker actively gives his works. The same root forms the word for a tower, echoing growth turned into a structure.
ALSO GROWS
gadol: Great or large.
גָּדוֹל
The adjective and the verb belong to the same family: greatness is tied to growth.
migdal: Tower.
מִגְדָּל
A tower makes upward growth visible as a built structure, echoing the expansion of the works here.
נָטַעְתִּי
nata'ti
GROWS FROM
נטע
nata
To plant or set a plant in the ground.
“planted” in this verse is nata'ti. Planting puts present effort into the ground with future yield in view. The vineyard is not only something possessed; it is something intended to keep producing for the self.
ALSO GROWS
neta: A plant or shoot.
נֶטַע
The word carries planting into the living growth that follows, making the vineyard a promise of later fruit.
matta: A planting or plantation.
מַטָּע
This branch names the planted place itself, extending the verse’s movement from action to an enduring cultivated possession.
THE PATTERN
Building and multiplying for oneself can enlarge what surrounds a person without resolving the desire at its center.
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:THE THREAD
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.Ecclesiastes’ הִגְדַּלְתִּי (higdalti, “I made great”) comes from גָּדַל (gadal, “grow, become great”), the same root behind מִגְדָּל (migdal, “tower”) here. Both verses show self-directed expansion taking material form, as great works in one, and a tower built to make a name in the other.
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