Ecclesiastes 6:3

Revised Standard Version (RSV-CI)

If a man begets a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but he does not enjoy life's good things, and also has no burial, I say that an untimely birth is better off than he.

Cross References

Genesis 33:5

And when Esau raised his eyes 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

And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.”

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 sons) he has chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.

2 Chronicles 11:21

Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and concubines (he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and had 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 princes and the servants of the king.

Esther 7:10

And the king said, “Hang him on that.” So they hanged Haman on the gallows which 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 as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never see the light?

Psalm 58:8

Let them be like the snail which 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 sons is their fathers.

Ecclesiastes 4:3

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

Ecclesiastes 6:4

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

Jeremiah 22:19

With the burial of an ass he shall be buried, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.”

Jeremiah 36:30

Therefore thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah, He shall have none 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 gone after, and which they have sought and worshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be as 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 man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”