Ecclesiastes 2:25

World English Bible

For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?

Parallel Translations

Legacy Standard Bible
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment outside of Him?

New American Standard Bible (1995)
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?

Bishop's Bible (1568)
For who wyll eate or go more lustyly to his worke then I?

Darby Translation
For who can eat, or who be eager, more than I?

New King James Version
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? [fn]

Literal Translation
For who can eat, or who can enjoy, apart from me?

King James Version (1611)
For who can eate? or who else can hasten hereunto more then I?

King James Version
For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
For who maye eate, drynke, or brynge eny thige to passe without him? And why?

Amplified Bible
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?

American Standard Version
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?

Bible in Basic English
Who may take food or have pleasure without him?

Update Bible Version
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?

Webster's Bible Translation
For who can eat, or who else can hasten [to it] more than I?

New English Translation
For no one can eat and drink or experience joy apart from him.

Contemporary English Version
and no one enjoys eating and living more than I do.

Complete Jewish Bible
For who will eat and who will enjoy except me?

Geneva Bible (1587)
For who could eate, and who could haste to outward things more then I?

George Lamsa Translation
For who can eat or who can drink except he?

Hebrew Names Version
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?

JPS Old Testament (1917)
For who will eat, or who will enjoy, if not I?

New Living Translation
For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him?

New Life Bible
For who can eat and who can find joy without Him?

Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
For who shall eat, or who shall drink, without him?

English Revised Version
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?

Berean Standard Bible
For apart from Him, who can eat and who can find enjoyment?

New Revised Standard
for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
For who could eat and who could enjoy, so well as I?

Douay-Rheims Bible
Who shall so feast and abound with delights as I?

Lexham English Bible
For who can eat and drink, and who can enjoy life apart from him?

English Standard Version
for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

New American Standard Bible
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?

New Century Version
because no one can eat or enjoy life without him.

Good News Translation
How else could you have anything to eat or enjoy yourself at all?

Christian Standard Bible®
because who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from Him?

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Who schal deuoure so, and schal flowe in delicis, as Y dide?

Revised Standard Version
for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

Young's Literal Translation
For who eateth and who hasteth out more than I?

Contextual Overview

¹⁷ So I hated life, because the work that is worked under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind. ¹⁸ I hated all my labor in which I labored under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who comes after me. ¹⁹ Who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have rule over all of my labor in which I have labored, and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity. ²⁰ Therefore I began to cause my heart to despair concerning all the labor in which I had labored under the sun. ²¹ For there is a man whose labor is with wisdom, with knowledge, and with skillfulness; yet he shall leave it for his portion to a man who has not labored therein. This also is vanity and a great evil. ²² For what has a man of all his labor, and of the striving of his heart, in which he labors under the sun? ²³ For all his days are sorrows, and his travail is grief; yes, even in the night his heart takes no rest. This also is vanity. ²⁴ There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it is from the hand of God. ²⁵ For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? ²⁶ For to the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he gives travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him who pleases God. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

who can: Ecclesiastes 2:1-12, 1 Kings 4:21-24

Reciprocal: Genesis 48:15 - fed me Ecclesiastes 2:12 - I turned 1 Corinthians 7:31 - use

Cross-References

Genesis 2:10
A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became four heads.

Genesis 2:11
The name of the first is Pishon: this is the one which flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

Genesis 3:7
Both of their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

Exodus 32:25
When Moses saw that the people had broken loose, (for Aaron had let them loose for a derision among their enemies,)

Psalms 25:3
Yes, no one who waits for you shall be put to shame. They shall be put to shame who deal treacherously without cause.

Psalms 31:17
Let me not be put to shame, Yahweh, for I have called on you. Let the wicked be put to shame. Let them be silent in Sheol.

Isaiah 44:9
Those who fashion an engraved image are all of them vanity; and the things that they delight in shall not profit; and their own witnesses don't see, nor know: that they may be put to shame.

Isaiah 47:3
Your nakedness shall be uncovered, yes, your shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and will spare no man.

Isaiah 54:4
Don't be afraid; for you shall not be ashamed: neither be confounded; for you shall not be put to shame: for you shall forget the shame of your youth; and the reproach of your widowhood shall you remember no more.

Jeremiah 6:15
Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, says Yahweh.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

For who can eat?.... Who should eat, but such a man that has laboured for it? or, who has a power to eat, that is, cheerfully, comfortably, and freely to enjoy the good things of life he is possessed of, unless it be given him of God? see Ecclesiastes 6:1;

or who else can hasten [hereunto] more than I? the word "chush", in Rabbinical language, is used of the five senses, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting: and R. Elias says c, there are some that so interpret it here, "who has [his] sense better than I?" a quicker sense, particularly of smelling and tasting what be eats, in which lies much of the pleasure of eating; and this is of God; which interpretation is not to be despised. Or, "who can prepare?" according to the Arabic sense of the word d; that is, a better table than I? No man had a greater affluence of good things than Solomon, or had a greater variety of eatables and drinkables; or had it in the power of his hands to live well, and cause his soul to enjoy good; or was more desirous to partake of pleasure, and hasten more to make the experiment of it in a proper manner; and yet he found, that a heart to do this was from the Lord; that this was a gift of his; and that though he abounded in the blessings of life, yet if God had not given him a heart to use them, he never should have really enjoyed them.

c In Tishbi, p. 109. d Vid. Rambachium in loc.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Solomon having found that wisdom and folly agree in being subject to vanity, now contrasts one with the other Ecclesiastes 2:13. Both are brought under vanity by events Ecclesiastes 2:14 which come on the wise man and the feel alike from without - death and oblivion Ecclesiastes 2:16, uncertainty Ecclesiastes 2:19, disappointment Ecclesiastes 2:21 - all happening by an external law beyond human control. Amidst this vanity, the good (see Ecclesiastes 2:10 note) that accrues to man, is the pleasure felt Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 in receiving God’s gifts, and in working with and for them.

Ecclesiastes 2:12

What can the man do ... - i. e., “What is any man - in this study of wisdom and folly - after one like me, who, from my position, have had such special advantages (see Ecclesiastes 1:16, and compare Ecclesiastes 2:25) for carrying it on? That which man did of old he can but do again: he is not likely to add to the result of my researches, nor even to equal them.” Some hold that the “man” is a reference to Solomon’s successor - not in his inquiries, but in his kingdom, i. e., Jeroboam.

Ecclesiastes 2:14

Event - Or, “hap” Ruth 2:3. The verb from which it is derived seems in this book to refer especially to death. The word does not mean chance (compare Ecclesiastes 9:1-2), independent of the ordering of Divine Providence: the Gentile notion of “mere chance,” or “blind fate,” is never once contemplated by the writer of this book, and it would be inconsistent with his tenets of the unlimited power and activity of God.

Ecclesiastes 2:16

Seeing that ... - Compare Ecclesiastes 1:11. Some render, “as in time past, so in days to come, all will be forgotten;” others, “because in the days to come all will have been long before forgotten.”

Ecclesiastes 2:17

I hated life - Compare this expression, extorted from Solomon by the perception of the vanity of his wisdom and greatness, with Romans 8:22-23. The words of Moses Numbers 11:15, and of Job Job 3:21; Job 6:9, are scarcely less forcible. With some people, this feeling is a powerful motive to conversion Luke 14:26.

Ecclesiastes 2:19

Labour - Compare Ecclesiastes 2:4-8.

Ecclesiastes 2:20

I went about - i. e., I turned from one course of action to another.

Ecclesiastes 2:23

Are sorrows ... grief - Rather, sorrows and grief are his toil. See Ecclesiastes 1:13.

Ecclesiastes 2:24

Nothing better for a man, than that ... - literally, no good in man that etc. The one joy of working or receiving, which, though it be transitory, a man recognizes as a real good, even that is not in the power of man to secure for himself: that good is the gift of God.

Ecclesiastes 2:26

The doctrine of retribution, or, the revealed fact that God is the moral Governor of the world, is here stated for the first time (compare Ecclesiastes 3:15, Ecclesiastes 3:17 ff) in this book.

This also is vanity - Not only the travail of the sinner. Even the best gifts of God, wisdom, knowledge, and joy, so far as they are given in this life, are not permanent, and are not always (see Ecclesiastes 9:11) efficacious for the purpose for which they appear to be given.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 25. For who can eat - more than I? — But instead of חוץ ממני chuts mimmenni, more than I; חוץ ממנו chuts mimmennu, without HIM, is the reading of eight of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., as also of the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic.

"For who maye eat, drynke, or bring enythinge to pass without him?" - COVERDALE.

I believe this to be the true reading. No one can have a true relish of the comforts of life without the Divine blessing. This reading connects all the sentences: "This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God;-for who can eat, and who can relish without HIM? For God giveth to man that is good." It is through his liberality that we have any thing to eat or drink; and it is only through his blessing that we can derive good from the use of what we possess.