What Does Ecclesiastes 3:22 Mean in the King James?
Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?
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
Your portion is the joy available in present work, not certainty about what it will leave behind.
THE MEANING
Your work in the present is a real share of life, and joy belongs to it now. What comes after you remains beyond your sight, so your portion does not include control over that future.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that present work matters only if you can see what it leaves behind: the work itself is named your portion, while the future stays unseen.
THE ROOT
חֶלְקוֹ
ḥelqô
GROWS FROM
חלק
ḥ-l-q
To divide, apportion, or share out.
The word names a share, not the whole field: your work is what is given into your hands, while the life after you remains outside your view. A related word for a plot of land makes the image concrete, a bounded portion one can inhabit, not the whole landscape.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālaq: To divide, apportion, or distribute.
חָלַק
This verb shows the seed beneath “portion”: what is yours is a share from a larger whole, not possession of everything.
ḥelqāh: A portion of land, plot, or field.
חֶלְקָה
A share becomes a specific place one can work and inhabit, echoing the verse’s focus on the work within reach.
THE PATTERN
Life’s share is received in what is present; its unknown future cannot be possessed in advance.
For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;THE THREAD
Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.The same word, חֵלֶק (ḥēleq), means “portion” or “share,” and names both the life shared with a loved one and the labor in your hands. It opens 3:22 further: your portion is the bounded share of life available now, not command over what comes after.
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