Ecclesiastes 4:3

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Ecclesiastes 4:1–5 · Berean Standard Bible

1 Again I looked, and I considered all the oppression taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; the power lay in the hands of their oppressors, and there was no comforter.

2 So I admired the dead, who had already died, above the living, who are still alive.

3 But better than both is he who has not yet existed, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.

4 I saw that all labor and success spring from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

5 The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh.

Hebrew words

Data created by STEPBible.org based on work at Tyndale House Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).

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Cross-references

The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge lists these related verses. Scripture text comes from the Berean Standard Bible.

Ecclesiastes 6:3

A man may father a hundred children and live for many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he is unsatisfied with his prosperity and does not even receive a proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

Ecclesiastes 6:4

For a stillborn child enters in futility and departs in darkness, and his name is shrouded in obscurity.

Ecclesiastes 6:5

The child, though neither seeing the sun nor knowing anything, has more rest than that man,

Job 3:10

For that night did not shut the doors of the womb to hide the sorrow from my eyes.

Job 3:11

Why did I not perish at birth; why did I not die as I came from the womb?

Job 3:12

Why were there knees to receive me, and breasts that I should be nursed?

Job 3:13

For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest

Job 3:14

with kings and counselors of the earth, who built for themselves cities now in ruins,

Job 3:15

or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.

Job 3:16

Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like an infant who never sees daylight?

Job 10:18

Why then did You bring me from the womb? Oh, that I had died, and no eye had seen me!

Job 10:19

If only I had never come to be, but had been carried from the womb to the grave.

Jeremiah 20:17

because he did not kill me in the womb so that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb forever enlarged.

Jeremiah 20:18

Why did I come out of the womb to see only trouble and sorrow, and to end my days in shame?

Matthew 24:19

How miserable those days will be for pregnant and nursing mothers!

Luke 23:29

Look, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!’

Ecclesiastes 1:14

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and have found them all to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.

Ecclesiastes 2:17

So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. For everything is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

Psalms 55:6

I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and find rest.

Psalms 55:7

How far away I would flee! In the wilderness I would remain. Selah

Psalms 55:8

I would hurry to my shelter, far from this raging tempest.”

Psalms 55:9

O Lord, confuse and confound their speech, for I see violence and strife in the city.

Psalms 55:10

Day and night they encircle the walls, while malice and trouble lie within.

Psalms 55:11

Destruction is within; oppression and deceit never leave the streets.

Jeremiah 9:2

If only I had a traveler’s lodge in the wilderness, I would abandon my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, a crowd of faithless people.

Jeremiah 9:3

“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not take Me into account,” declares the LORD.