Ecclesiastes 5:8–20 | World English Bible Classic
8 If you see the oppression of the poor, and the violent taking away of justice and righteousness in a district, don’t marvel at the matter, for one official is eyed by a higher one, and there are officials over them. 9 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all. The king profits from the field.
10 He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he who loves abundance, with increase. This also is vanity. 11 When goods increase, those who eat them are increased; and what advantage is there to its owner, except to feast on them with his eyes? 12 The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not allow him to sleep.
13 There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: wealth kept by its owner to his harm. 14 Those riches perish by misfortune, and if he has fathered a son, there is nothing in his hand. 15 As he came out of his mother’s womb, naked shall he go again as he came, and shall take nothing for his labor, which he may carry away in his hand. 16 This also is a grievous evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go. And what profit does he have who labors for the wind? 17 All his days he also eats in darkness, he is frustrated, and has sickness and wrath.
18 Behold, that which I have seen to be good and proper is for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labor, in which he labors under the sun, all the days of his life which God has given him; for this is his portion. 19 Every man also to whom God has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat of it, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor—this is the gift of God. 20 For he shall not often reflect on the days of his life, because God occupies him with the joy of his heart.
Verse 8 returns to the oppression already observed in the place of justice and among people without a comforter. The setting is a district in which the poor are being deprived of justice and righteousness. The wrong has a public and institutional form. It concerns how people are treated within an arrangement that should judge their claims rightly.
The violent taking away of justice intensifies the description. The poor do not merely fail to acquire an optional advantage. Something owed to them as persons before a standard of right is being wrested away. Official activity can become the means through which the deprivation occurs.
“Don't marvel at the matter” does not call the conduct acceptable. The sentence has already named it oppression and the removal of justice. Its instruction concerns the observer's astonishment that this can happen within an official order. The presence of structure is not proof that the structure will fulfill its purpose.
The explanation names a chain of authority: one official is watched by a higher official, with still others above them. Such oversight might restrain wrongdoing, but the oppression described is happening within this very arrangement. A superior may correct an abusive subordinate or protect an official whose position benefits from abuses below. The Preacher does not assign a particular motive to every rank; he shows why the existence of supervision offers the poor no automatic guarantee of justice.
Verse 9 is compressed and difficult: “Moreover the profit of the earth is for all. The king profits from the field.” The Hebrew has been understood both as emphasizing a king’s service to the land and as describing his dependence on its yield. The WEB follows the latter sense. Even the king, standing above the officials, must eat what fields produce and laborers cultivate.
Royal command cannot grow grain by itself. The same field that supports the court also sustains the wider population, though verse 8 has already shown that its benefits may be distributed unjustly. The words “for all” should therefore not be mistaken for a claim that everyone receives a fair share.
The movement from officials to fields prepares the examination of wealth. What appears as an owner’s private abundance depends on land, work, and other people; questions of satisfaction cannot be wholly separated from questions of how those goods were obtained and whom they sustain.
Verse 10 identifies the disposition under examination: “He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver.” Silver names money and wealth in a familiar material form. The statement concerns the lover's relation to it, rather than a claim that money cannot buy anything useful.
The person receives more of the very thing he loves, yet satisfaction does not follow. If his only problem had been the absence of a particular amount needed for a particular purpose, reaching that amount could have answered it. Love of accumulation supplies a demand that renews itself after the purchase is made.
The parallel clause extends the same judgment to the person who loves abundance. Increase does not settle him. A larger holding can become the new starting point from which another increase seems necessary. The object is not merely what the wealth can do; the growth itself has become part of what he desires.
“This also is vanity” judges that failure of satisfaction. The resources may be real, and the increase may be substantial. The futility concerns an appetite that possession keeps feeding without bringing it to rest. The person can succeed at accumulating and fail at obtaining the condition he expected accumulation to produce.
The distinction keeps the warning directed toward the heart without making material need imaginary. Someone who needs money for food has a need that money can address. Someone who requires more than a rival possesses has adopted a measure that the rival's next success can change. The outward act of earning does not by itself tell us which demand governs it.
Verse 11 tests abundance through the people it attracts and sustains: “When goods increase, those who eat them are increased.” A larger estate has more claims upon it. Its produce can support household members, workers, attendants, and others whose needs or expectations grow with the holding.
The sentence does not describe every additional eater as a parasite. An estate needs labor, and a household may have legitimate dependents. Their presence demonstrates something about possession: the owner is not the only person involved in consuming what he counts among his goods.
More resources can therefore mean more responsibilities as well as more options. Property has to be maintained, workers supplied, commitments met, and demands considered. The increase does not arrive as a quantity of private enjoyment detached from the relationships needed to sustain it.
The Preacher then asks what advantage remains to the owner except seeing his goods. The eye can survey an expanding estate even when the owner receives no corresponding increase in personal enjoyment. His wealth is visible to him without becoming proportionately available for his own use.
Verse 12 compares the conditions of two people at the end of the day. The laborer's sleep is sweet whether he eats little or much. The rich person's abundance, however, will not allow him to sleep. The comparison examines wealth at a point where additional possessions are often expected to provide ease.
The laborer has worked and can rest, whether his meal was small or large. The rich person has more provisions but lacks this ordinary good. The comparison does not romanticize hardship; it exposes a case in which greater possession fails to bring the ease it seems to promise.
The abundance is described as part of the obstruction. Resources that seem able to remove care can bring cares of their own: keeping what has been gained, meeting the claims it creates, and considering what might threaten it. The person may have finished the visible work while remaining occupied by the estate.
Hunger, insecurity, and painful labor can also interfere with sleep. The proverb’s contrast exposes the limits of wealth without promising that poverty always provides pleasant nights.
Sleep is part of the Preacher's measure of a life. An account that records rising assets while ignoring the loss of rest leaves out a real cost. The contrast prepares us for the more severe observation in verse 13: wealth can be kept not merely without benefit, but to the keeper's harm.
Verse 13 introduces a particular observation: “There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun.” The severity belongs to what the Preacher has encountered, not merely an imagined risk. Wealth has been kept by its owner in a way that harms him.
Kept wealth is normally expected to preserve the person. Resources set aside can provide for a need, sustain a household, or support useful work. Here the relationship has become destructive. The thing retained for benefit has become involved in the owner's injury.
The text does not identify the precise mechanism of harm. Guarding the wealth may consume the owner’s attention, narrow his life, or leave him unable to receive the ordinary good available to him. The next verse then introduces a second blow: the riches he has kept can disappear through misfortune.
The question is therefore not simply whether the estate is growing. It is what preserving it is doing to the person who owns it. A resource meant to sustain life can become the reason the owner sacrifices the rest, enjoyment, and security he hoped it would provide.
Verse 14 then describes the riches perishing through misfortune. The passage does not identify the event precisely enough for us to name a specific failed investment, disaster, or theft. Its point is that what was held does not remain securely available. The owner encounters loss beyond the protection possession seemed to provide.
The son makes the consequence reach beyond the present owner. Wealth that once filled the father’s hands is no longer available for his child. Fathering a child does not guarantee that the resources intended for him will survive until the transfer. The passage does not ridicule a parent’s wish to provide; it denies that a good purpose and careful keeping can make an inheritance invulnerable.
This differs from the grievance in 2:18–21, where someone else receives the result of the worker's labor. There the results remain while the worker loses control of them. Here the holding itself disappears, leaving nothing in hand. The uncertainty concerns both who will possess the fruits and whether those fruits will remain available at all.
Verse 15 moves from a loss that happens in a particular life to the condition no owner's wealth can avoid. A person arrives from his mother's womb naked and departs without carrying away the fruit of his labor. Accumulation occurs between two boundaries at which the accumulated possessions cannot establish his claim.
The image of nakedness concerns his lack of goods brought into or carried out of earthly life. He did not arrive with an estate already in his hand. Whatever he acquired during his days does not become something he can take through death as personal property.
Work may still benefit others after its worker dies. The Preacher's point is narrower and more severe: the worker cannot take the estate as his personal possession beyond death. The goods may remain in the world, but his ownership of them does not.
“What profit does he have who labors for the wind?” brings the familiar pursuit image into the accounting. The effort has been real, but the desired holding cannot be carried beyond the worker's end. The failure is not a lack of exertion. It is the inability of exertion to make earthly possession permanent.
Verse 16 calls this departure a “grievous evil.” Here the expression identifies a painful condition, not an accusation that every owner has acquired his goods by wrongdoing. The loss is that he must leave exactly as he came, despite all the labor between arrival and departure. The question about laboring for the wind measures that effort against what the worker can finally carry with him.
Job uses the same image after losing his possessions and children:
Job 1:20–22 | World English Bible Classic
Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked will I return there. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be Yahweh’s name.” In all this, Job didn’t sin, nor charge God with wrongdoing.
Job’s confession rises from real grief: he tears his robe, shaves his head, and worships. His recognition that he came into the world without possessions does not deny the worth of the children and goods he has lost. The gifts were real, and so is the pain of losing them.
Job is identified as upright before his calamities. His losses therefore cannot be treated as proof of dishonesty or divine punishment. Read alongside Ecclesiastes, his words acknowledge that no person enters life owning an estate or can carry one beyond death; they do not require sufferers to hide their grief or pretend to understand why loss occurred.
Verse 17 returns attention to the manner of living before the final departure. The man eats in darkness, with frustration, sickness, and wrath. The account is not satisfied to say that he eventually loses what he cannot keep. It considers the quality of the days through which he pursued and guarded it.
Eating normally names a basic experience of provision and enjoyment. Here darkness accompanies it. The remaining descriptions give the image its painful character: vexation, illness, and anger belong to the life being portrayed. The meal is present without the good the meal might have supplied.
Darkness describes the gloom of this life; the verse does not require a literal unlit room. Nor does it teach that every illness results from greed. The clustered descriptions—darkness, frustration, sickness, and anger—show how bitter the days can become when wealth is guarded without being enjoyed.
“All his days” makes the cost severe. The person can sacrifice the experience of living to the preservation of goods he eventually cannot carry away. The loss at the end is made more bitter by the good repeatedly withheld during the days when it might have been received.
James addresses a related but distinct evil. Ecclesiastes describes wealth kept to its owner’s harm and later lost, without saying that this particular owner obtained it dishonestly. James explicitly condemns wealthy landowners who have withheld their workers’ wages by fraud:
James 5:1–6 | World English Bible Classic
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies. You have lived in luxury on the earth, and taken your pleasure. You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and you have murdered the righteous one. He doesn’t resist you.
James identifies the wrongdoing rather than merely the amount possessed: laborers did the work, and their pay was withheld. Their cries expose the injustice behind the owner’s apparent success. Where Ecclesiastes shows that wealth cannot guarantee enjoyment or security, James shows that wealth acquired by oppression can also testify against its keeper.
The field in Ecclesiastes and the field in James make a useful comparison, but the passages must retain their different charges. An anxious or ruined owner is not automatically a fraudster. When exploitation is present, however, learning to enjoy wealth is no substitute for repentance and making right what was withheld.
Verse 18 begins with “Behold” and introduces what the Preacher has seen to be good and proper. After the account of harmful keeping, loss, and bitter living, he names eating, drinking, and enjoying good in labor during the days God gives. The judgment is positive and specific.
He does not make good depend upon the worker becoming wealthy enough to remove every possible danger. The provision belongs within the ordinary course of labor. The person can receive good during his actual days rather than postpone it until the whole future is securely financed.
Those days are themselves given by God. This is more fundamental than the question of what fills the storehouse. The owner cannot enjoy goods without living to receive them, and continued life is not something the goods have independently produced.
“For this is his portion” identifies an available share. The word has already described joy received through labor. Here it marks the good belonging within the worker's limited life, rather than a gain that gives him authority over every outcome beyond it.
That portion need not be despised because it is passing. Food can nourish, drink can refresh, and useful work can satisfy without making the worker permanent. The Preacher's criticism concerns the larger claim accumulation cannot fulfill. He can expose that claim while affirming the good actually available.
The place of God in the sentence also distinguishes reception from entitlement. The person receives days and good within them before the Giver. Enjoyment becomes a truthful use of provision rather than an assertion that successful labor has made him independent.
Verse 19 considers the case in which riches and enjoyment do occur together. God gives the wealth and also gives the power to eat from it, take the portion, and rejoice in labor. The two gifts should not be collapsed into one automatic result.
The earlier owner possessed goods without receiving a corresponding good from them. The present description includes the ability to receive what is available. Having a meal and enjoying it are related, but the second is not guaranteed merely by counting the food on the table.
“This is the gift of God” therefore reaches the whole condition described. Wealth can be part of provision without becoming the person's source of life. The capacity to take a portion and rejoice belongs to God's giving as well. The recipient's appropriate posture is gratitude rather than the assumption that he has manufactured every condition of his own satisfaction.
The verse promises neither riches to every faithful person nor constant cheerfulness to everyone who receives God's gifts. Earlier verses have already shown the oppressed poor and the anxious wealthy. Its point is that possessing goods and being able to enjoy them are distinct gifts, not that income reveals a person's standing before God.
Verse 20 explains something enjoyment does within the limited days: the recipient does not often reflect on them because God occupies him with the joy of his heart. His attention is engaged by good received rather than continually consumed by reckoning the passing of life.
This does not mean the recipient forgets mortality. Ecclesiastes repeatedly calls us to face it. The contrast is between living under the exhausting calculation of passing days and receiving the joy God supplies within those days. The days remain limited; the heart need not spend every one of them rehearsing that limit.
There is a reversal of occupation here. The solitary worker had no end to labor and deprived himself of enjoyment. The anxious owner could not sleep. Here God occupies the heart with joy. The person is still living a brief life and doing real work, but the inward condition is different.
Jesus' account of a rich farmer exposes the demand that stored goods secure continuing life:
Luke 12:16–21 | World English Bible Classic
He spoke a parable to them, saying, “The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’ He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
The farmer’s abundant harvest raises a legitimate question about storage. His error appears when he addresses his soul as though full barns could guarantee “many years.” He has confused provisions that might sustain life with authority over how long that life will last.
God’s question exposes the distinction: the goods remain, but the owner cannot claim another day. His plans concern treasure stored for himself without reckoning with God, the giver of life.
Ecclesiastes commends eating, drinking, and rejoicing because both the days and the capacity to enjoy them come from God. The farmer uses similar words while treating his harvest as a guarantee of the future. The Preacher invites the reader to receive the good actually given, rather than surrender today’s portion to the pursuit of security no storehouse can provide.