What Does Ecclesiastes 5:6 Mean in the King James?
Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?
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
A spoken commitment can draw the whole body into its miss, and calling it an accident does not make its consequences vanish.
THE MEANING
Your mouth can set your embodied life on a course that misses its mark. Calling the words an accident does not remove their consequence. Voice, flesh, and the work of your hands remain joined.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that words spoken carelessly can be dismissed as a mistake with no consequence for the speaker or their work.
THE ROOT
לַחֲטִיא
laḥaṭi
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥṭʾ
To miss, fail, or go wrong.
“sin” in this verse is laḥaṭi. Here the verb is causative: the mouth can cause the flesh to miss, not merely name an abstract fault. This root also stands beneath the word for an offering for the missing, so the miss has consequence and calls for a response.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss or go wrong.
חָטָא
The verb makes the warning active: the mouth can cause the body to miss its mark.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: A missing; in sacrificial contexts, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The same root names both the miss and a response to it, showing that the word reaches beyond an abstract label.
שְׁגָגָה
shegagah
GROWS FROM
שגג
š-g-g
To err or go wrong inadvertently.
The speaker calls the vow an inadvertent misstep, and the word belongs to a family for unintended error. The verse keeps that label beside the threatened loss: an unintended miss still has consequences.
ALSO GROWS
šāgag: To err unintentionally.
שָׁגַג
This verb shows the root’s sense of an inadvertent wrong, the very shade carried by the speaker’s excuse.
šōgēg: One who errs inadvertently.
שׁוֹגֵג
The root can describe the person who made the unintended error, without implying that the error had no effect.
THE PATTERN
Words spoken aloud carry consequences into the speaker’s life, body, and accountability.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.THE THREAD
I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.The word for “sin” in both verses comes from חטא (ḥṭʾ, to miss). Ecclesiastes warns that the mouth can cause the flesh to miss; Psalm 32 brings the miss into speech instead of hiding it, and places that acknowledgment beside forgiveness.
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