Bible Strands
Ecclesiastes 7:15
In my futile life I have seen both of these: A righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The speaker reflects on his own futile life while addressing readers who observe contradictory human outcomes. He speaks at a moment of sober observation immediately following a warning about God’s sovereign arrangement of prosperity and adversity.
The words — The Hebrew phrase יֵ֤שׁ צַדִּיק֙ אֹבֵ֣ד (yesh tza.Dik 'o.Ved) literally means "there is a righteous [person] who perishes." This phrasing anchors the observation in direct empirical experience rather than abstract theology.
The thread — This observation of the wicked living long appears in Ecclesiastes 8:12, while the broader theme of fleeting human life and envying the prosperous echoes Ecclesiastes 6:12 and Psalm 73:3. These passages collectively document the recurring biblical encounter with life’s apparent moral inversions.
Why it lands — The text records the teacher’s empirical finding that moral behavior does not guarantee predictable earthly outcomes. It asks the reader to acknowledge this empirical reality without inventing theological shortcuts to explain it.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
Cross-references
- Ecclesiastes 8:12 Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and still lives long, yet I also know that it will go well with those who fear God, who are reverent in His presence.
- Ecclesiastes 6:12 For who knows what is good for a man during the few days in which he passes through his fleeting life like a shadow? Who can tell a man what will come after him under the sun?
- Psalms 73:3 For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
- Matthew 23:34 Because of this, I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and others you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town.
- Ecclesiastes 9:1 So I took all this to heart and concluded that the righteous and the wise, as well as their deeds, are in God’s hands. Man does not know what lies ahead, whether love or hate.
- Genesis 47:9 “My travels have lasted 130 years,” Jacob replied. “My years have been few and hard, and they have not matched the years of the travels of my fathers.”
- 1 Samuel 22:18 So the king ordered Doeg, “You turn and strike down the priests!” And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests himself. On that day he killed eighty-five men who wore the linen ephod.
- 1 Kings 21:13 And the two scoundrels came in and sat opposite Naboth, and these men testified against him before the people, saying, “Naboth has cursed both God and the king!” So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death.
- 2 Chronicles 24:21 But they conspired against Zechariah, and by order of the king, they stoned him in the courtyard of the house of the LORD.
- Job 9:22 It is all the same, and so I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’