What Does Ecclesiastes 3:10 Mean in the King James?
I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
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 work’s being given does not make its strain invisible: the verse names it as both placed within human life and seen.
THE MEANING
The work that occupies you is named as something God has set within human life; its strain remains visible rather than erased. The verse meets you inside the labor taking your attention now without explaining its weight away.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that exhaustion proves you alone are failing at life; the verse places travail within the shared human condition and says it is seen.
THE ROOT
נָתַן
natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
נתן (natan): give, set, place.
The verse uses the root of giving and placing for the work that occupies human life. Being given does not make this travail painless; it names how it comes to be set within the human condition.
ALSO GROWS
netinah: giving; a grant
נְתִינָה
This noun from נתן brings the act of giving into view: the work is presented as something placed into human life.
natun: given; set; placed
נָתוּן
This form from נתן describes being set in a condition, echoing the verse’s image of people occupied within the work.
הָאָדָם
ha-adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
אדם (adam): human, humanity; linked in Hebrew wordplay with אֲדָמָה (adamah), ground.
“men” in this verse is ha-adam. The phrase בני האדם names people as children of the human, the ground-being. Its consonants echo אדמה (adamah, ground), locating this toil in embodied, soil-linked human life.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: ground; soil
אֲדָמָה
The shared consonants connect humanity with the ground from which the human is named.
Edom: Edom; red
אֱדוֹם
Edom’s name is tied to redness, preserving the same consonants and a color-and-earth echo around Adam.
רָאִיתִי
ra'iti
GROWS FROM
ראה
ראה (ra’ah): see, look, perceive; appear.
“seen” in this verse is ra'iti. The verse begins with seeing, before it explains the work or its cause. The same root connects the act of seeing with what appears, so the toil comes into view as something plainly beheld rather than an invisible private failure.
ALSO GROWS
ro'eh: one who sees; seer
רֹאֶה
This form names the one who sees, keeping the verse’s opening act of perception in the root family.
mar'eh: appearance; sight; vision
מַרְאֶה
This noun names what comes into view, echoing the verse’s movement from hidden strain to seen travail.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names laboring strain as a shared feature of human and created life rather than hiding it.
And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.THE THREAD
For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.The same Hebrew root נתן (natan: give, set, place) names wisdom, knowledge, and joy, and also the travail one person gathers for another. That shared verb opens “given” here as a placing within human life while leaving the disturbing weight of the work in view.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us