ä¼ é“ä¹¦ 4:3

Chinese NCV (Simplified)

那還沒生下來的，就是還沒看過日光之下所行的惡事的，比這兩種人更有福。

Parallel Translations

Chinese Union (Simplified)
并 且 我 以 为 那 未 曾 生 的 ， 就 是 未 见 过 日 光 之 下 恶 事 的 ， 比 这 两 等 人 更 强 。

Contextual Overview

¹ Again I saw all the people who were mistreated here on earth. I saw their tears and that they had no one to comfort them. Cruel people had all the power, and there was no one to comfort those they hurt. ² I decided that the dead are better off than the living. ³ But those who have never been born are better off still; they have not seen the evil that is done here on earth.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

better: Ecclesiastes 6:3-5, Job 3:10-16, Job 10:18, Job 10:19, Jeremiah 20:17, Jeremiah 20:18, Matthew 24:19, Luke 23:29

who: Ecclesiastes 1:14, Ecclesiastes 2:17, Psalms 55:6-11, Jeremiah 9:2, Jeremiah 9:3

Reciprocal: Ecclesiastes 1:3 - under Ecclesiastes 2:18 - I hated

Cross-References

Genesis 4:1
Adam had sexual relations with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. Eve said, "With the Lord 's help, I have given birth to a man."

Genesis 4:11
And now you will be cursed in your work with the ground, the same ground where your brother's blood fell and where your hands killed him.

Numbers 18:12
"And I give you all the best olive oil and all the best new wine and grain. This is what the Israelites give to me, the Lord , from the first crops they harvest.

1 Kings 17:7
After a while the stream dried up because there was no rain.

Nehemiah 13:6
I was not in Jerusalem when this happened. I had gone back to Artaxerxes king of Babylon in the thirty-second year he was king. Finally I asked the king to let me leave.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Yea, better [is he] than both they which hath not yet been,.... That is, an unborn person; who is preferred both to the dead that have seen oppression, and to the living that are under it; see Job 3:10. This supposes a person to be that never was, a mere nonentity; and the judgment made is according to sense, and regards the dead purely as such, and so as free from evils and sorrows, without any respect to their future state and condition; for otherwise an unborn person is not happier than the dead that die in Christ, and live with him: and it can only be true of those that perish, of whom indeed it might be said, that it would have been better for them if they had never been born, according to those words of Christ,

Matthew 26:24; and is opposed to the maxim of some philosophers, that a miserable being is better than none at all. The Jews, from this passage, endeavour to prove the pre-existence of human souls, and suppose that such an one is here meant, which, though created, was not yet sent into this world in a body, and so had never seen evil and sorrow; and this way some Christian writers have gone. It has been interpreted also of the Messiah, who in Solomon's time had not yet been a man, and never known sorrow, which he was to do, and has, and so more happy than the dead or living. But these are senses that will not bear; the first is best; and the design is to show the great unhappiness of mortals, that even a nonentity is preferred to them;

who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun? the evil works of oppressors, and the sorrows of the oppressed.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Ecclesiastes 4:3. Which hath not yet been — Better never to have been born into the world, than to have seen and suffered so many miseries.