Ecclesiastes 6:3 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition 2021

³ A man may father a hundred children and live many years, but however many are the days of his years, if he does not enjoy life’s good things or has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

More versions

King James Version (Oxford) 1769

³ If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

Amplified Bible - Classic Edition

³ If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his life is not filled with good, and also he is given no burial [honors nor is laid to rest in the sepulcher of his fathers], I say that [he who had] an untimely birth [resulting in death] is better off than he, [Job 3:16.]

American Standard Version (1901)

³ If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul be not filled with good, and moreover he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he:

Common English Bible

³ Some people may have one hundred children and live a long life. But no matter how long they live, if they aren’t content with life’s good things, I say that even a stillborn child with no grave is better off than they are.

Catholic Public Domain Version

³ If a man were to produce one hundred children, and to live for many years, and to attain to an age of many days, and if his soul were to make no use of the goods of his resources, and if he were lacking even a burial: concerning such a man, I declare that a miscarried child is better than he.

Douay-Rheims version of The Bible - 1752 version

³ If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years, and attain to a great age, and his soul make no use of the goods of his substance, and he be without burial: of this man I pronounce, that the untimely born is better than he.

Ecclesiastes 6:3 Cross References

Genesis 33:5

When Esau looked up and saw the women and children, he said, “Who are these with you?” Jacob said, “The children whom God has graciously given your servant.”

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.”

2 Kings 10:1

Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. So Jehu wrote letters and sent them to Samaria, to the rulers of the city, to the elders, and to the guardians of the sons of Ahab, saying,

2 Kings 9:35

But when they went to bury her, they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands.

1 Chronicles 28:5

And of all my sons, for the Lord has given me many, he has chosen my son Solomon to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.

2 Chronicles 11:21

Rehoboam loved Maacah daughter of Absalom more than all his other wives and concubines (he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines and became the father of twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters).

Esther 5:11

and Haman recounted to them the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honored him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the ministers of the king.

Esther 7:10

So they hung Haman on the pole that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

Job 3:11

“Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?

Job 3:16

Or why was I not buried like a stillborn child, like an infant that never sees the light?

Psalm 58:8

Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the untimely birth that never sees the sun.

Proverbs 17:6

Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their parents.

Ecclesiastes 4:3

but better than both is the one who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 6:4

For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered;

Jeremiah 22:19

With the burial of a donkey he shall be buried: dragged off and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 36:30

Therefore thus says the Lord concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah: He shall have no one to sit upon the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night.

Jeremiah 8:2

and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have followed, and which they have inquired of and worshiped, and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground.

Matthew 26:24

The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.”