Bible Strands
Ecclesiastes 7:6
For like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This too is futile.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The Preacher addresses a general audience within Ecclesiastes, placing this observation immediately after a comparison between wise correction and foolish song.
The words — שְׂחֹק (səḥōq) = laughter, and כֶּסֶל (keṣel) = fool, anchor the verse’s subject in the vocal excess of the unwise.
The thread — The text echoes the futility of empty laughter noted in Ecclesiastes 2:2, while the burning thorns motif appears in Psalms 58:9 and Psalms 118:12.
Why it lands — The text states that the fool’s laughter is as transient and noisy as thorns burning under a pot, concluding that such noise accomplishes nothing.
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
For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.
Cross-references
- Psalms 58:9 Before your pots can feel the burning thorns—whether green or dry—He will sweep them away.
- Psalms 118:12 They swarmed around me like bees, but they were extinguished like burning thorns; in the name of the LORD I cut them off.
- Ecclesiastes 2:2 I said of laughter, “It is folly,” and of pleasure, “What does it accomplish?”
- Luke 6:25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
- Jude 1:12 These men are hidden reefs in your love feasts, shamelessly feasting with you but shepherding only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried along by the wind; fruitless trees in autumn, twice dead after being uprooted.
- Proverbs 29:9 If a wise man goes to court with a fool, there will be raving and laughing with no resolution.
- Isaiah 65:13 Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: “My servants will eat, but you will go hungry; My servants will drink, but you will go thirsty; My servants will rejoice, but you will be put to shame.
- Amos 8:10 I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.
- Luke 16:25 But Abraham answered, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things. But now he is comforted here, while you are in agony.
- 2 Peter 2:13 The harm they will suffer is the wages of their wickedness. They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deception as they feast with you.