Ecclesiastes 2:23 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition 2021

For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.

More versions

King James Version (Oxford) 1769

For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.

Amplified Bible - Classic Edition

For all his days are but pain and sorrow, and his work is a vexation and grief; his mind takes no rest even at night. This is also vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility)!

American Standard Version (1901)

For all his days are but sorrows, and his travail is grief; yea, even in the night his heart taketh no rest. This also is vanity.

Common English Bible

All their days are pain, and their work is aggravation; even at night, their hearts don’t find rest. This too is pointless.

Catholic Public Domain Version

All his days have been filled with sorrows and hardships; neither does he rest his mind, even in the night. And is this not emptiness?

Douay-Rheims version of The Bible - 1752 version

All his days axe full of sorrows and miseries, even in the night he doth not rest in mind: and is not this vanity?

Ecclesiastes 2:23 Cross References

Genesis 3:17

And to the man he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

Genesis 47:9

Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my earthly sojourn are one hundred thirty; few and hard have been the years of my life. They do not compare with the years of the life of my ancestors during their long sojourn.”

Esther 6:1

On that night the king could not sleep, and he gave orders to bring the book of records, the annals, and they were read to the king.

Job 14:1

“A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,

Job 5:7

but humans are born to trouble just as sparks fly upward.

Psalm 127:2

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives sleep to his beloved.

Psalm 32:4

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

Psalm 90:15

Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us and as many years as we have seen evil.

Ecclesiastes 1:13

I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to humans to be busy with.

Ecclesiastes 1:18

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.

Ecclesiastes 2:11

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 5:12

Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not let them sleep.

Ecclesiastes 5:17

Besides, all their days they eat in darkness, in much anger and sickness and resentment.

Ecclesiastes 8:16

When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, how one’s eyes see sleep neither day nor night,

Daniel 6:18

Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no entertainment was brought to him, and sleep fled from him.

Acts 14:22

There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God.”