What Does Ecclesiastes 9:6 Mean in the King James?
Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.
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
Love, hatred, and envy are not permanent possessions; each loses its share in the world beneath the sun when the life that holds it ends.
THE MEANING
Your love, hatred, and envy have no further share in what is done under the sun when your life ends. Even the strongest attachments fall within mortality’s boundary.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a powerful attachment can secure a lasting claim on the living world gives way: love, hatred, and envy perish, and their share in under-sun life ends.
THE ROOT
חֵלֶק
cheleq
GROWS FROM
חלק
chalaq
To divide, allot, or apportion.
The root gathers division and allotment into the word “portion”: a cheleq is a share within a whole. The verse says the dead have no further allotment in what life continues to do under the sun.
ALSO GROWS
chalaq: To divide, allot, or apportion.
חָלַק
A portion is what has been apportioned as one’s share; the dead hold no continuing allotment in under-sun activity.
chelqah: A plot of land or field parcel.
חֶלְקָה
The word gives a share the image of a bounded piece within a larger whole, fitting the verse’s limit on participation.
machloqet: A division or dispute.
מַחֲלֹקֶת
The same root can name division among people, showing how allotment and separation belong to the word’s wider family.
אָבְדָה
avadah
GROWS FROM
אבד
avad
To perish, be lost, or disappear.
The form says these attachments have perished, not merely grown quiet. Paired with “no portion,” it presents both the feeling and its share in under-sun life as ended.
ALSO GROWS
avad: To perish or be lost.
אָבַד
This is the verb’s root form, carrying the sense of disappearance found in the verse.
oved: Lost or perishing.
אֹבֵד
This form describes one who is lost or perishing, echoing the verse’s language of attachments that no longer remain among the living.
avedah: A lost thing or piece of lost property.
אֲבֵדָה
The noun makes loss concrete: what once belonged to someone is no longer in their possession.
THE PATTERN
What belongs to mortal life beneath the sun passes with its allotted span.
He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.THE THREAD
Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.The same Hebrew word, חֵלֶק (cheleq, portion), names the living person’s share: food, drink, and the good of labor under the sun. Ecclesiastes 9:6 shows that this share belongs to the span of life and does not continue when that life ends.
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