What Does Ecclesiastes 9:3 Mean in the King James?
This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
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
What English calls an event is a meeting every person shares: death arrives while the living heart is still full of evil and madness.
THE MEANING
Every person living now moves toward the same end; no one stands outside it. While life continues, the human heart is full of evil and madness, and afterward that person joins the dead.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a person’s moral standing exempts them from death is undone: the same end comes to all.
THE ROOT
מִקְרֶה
miqreh
GROWS FROM
קרה
qarah
To meet, happen, or befall.
The Hebrew word translated “event” comes from a root that can mean to meet or befall. English presents a thing that happens to everyone; the root lets us hear death as the encounter that comes to all.
ALSO GROWS
miqreh: An event or occurrence.
מִקְרֶה
This is the word the verse uses for the one event shared by all.
qarah: To happen, befall, or meet.
קָרָה
The verb reveals the event as something that meets or comes upon a person.
הוֹלֵלוֹת
holēlōt
GROWS FROM
הלל
halal
Praise or exult; this form carries the sense of raving or madness.
The Hebrew word for madness shares its root with halal, the word for praise. This form means raving, bringing a forceful, ungoverned intensity into the verse’s picture of the living heart.
ALSO GROWS
halal: Praise, boast, or exult.
הָלַל
This familiar branch of the root stands beside the verse’s word for madness.
holel: Raving or acting madly.
הוֹלֵל
This related form gives the heart’s madness a sense of ungoverned intensity.
THE PATTERN
The living share a mortal end, regardless of how they imagine their distinction.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:THE THREAD
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.The word translated “event” in Ecclesiastes 9:3 is מִקְרֶה (miqreh), from קָרָה (qarah), “to happen, befall, meet”; the same Hebrew word is translated “befalleth” here. This verse extends the shared encounter to animals too, and its “one breath” is רוּחַ (ruach), breath.
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