Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Ecclesiastes 8:16 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 16. 16When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:)
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse reports an intensive attempt to know wisdom and observe earth's business, even through sleeplessness.
Just people get the wicked's lot, and God's work cannot be found
This verse is one part of that explanation in Ecclesiastes 8:14-17. The complete section carries the connected meaning and how it should shape life.
Read It With
- Ecclesiastes 8:14-17
Read Ecclesiastes 8:16 with 8:14-17. This verse reports an intensive attempt to know wisdom and observe earth's business, even through sleeplessness. The full unit establishes this movement: Righteous people can receive wicked outcomes and wicked people righteous outcomes; Qoheleth answers neither with denial nor total explanation but with finite enjoyment and a confession that even tireless wisdom cannot discover the whole work of God.
Why This Verse Appears Here
The unit refuses to let the preceding confession become a simplistic outcome formula. Within that movement, this verse reports an intensive attempt to know wisdom and observe earth's business, even through sleeplessness.
What Remains True
Relentless observation does not guarantee mastery and can exact an embodied cost.
How It Can Shape Life
- Set research boundaries that preserve sleep and acknowledge incomplete evidence.
Continue in Context
Read the complete section for the connected explanation and how it should shape life. This verse is a doorway into that passage, not a saying that stands alone.
Read Ecclesiastes 8:14-17 — Moral Reversal, Enjoyment, and Unsearchable WorkSources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
The verse does not praise sleep deprivation or make exhaustion proof of serious scholarship.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed Scripture wording, paragraph markers, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage.
Exact location: Ecclesiastes 8:14-17, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Ecclesiastes
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used for lexical, grammatical, repeated-word, and translation questions.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Eccl.xml, 8:14-17
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Ecclesiastes with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-level textual, grammatical, lexical, literary, and translation alternatives.
Exact location: NET Bible Ecclesiastes PDF, printed pp. 1213-1214, translation and notes on 8:14-17
Open source ↗