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

²³ 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

²³ 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

²³ 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)

²³ 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

²³ 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

²³ 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

²³ 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.”