Ecclesiastes 6:7 · World English Bible
Ecclesiastes 6:7 Meaning All the Labor of Man Is
All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.
What does Ecclesiastes 6:7 mean?
Feed the appetite harder and it grows; the hunger was never about what you kept putting in. Every hour of work is a vehicle for a need, and a vehicle is worth exactly what it delivers.
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Feed the appetite harder and it grows; the hunger was never about what you kept putting in.
Every hour of work is a vehicle for a need, and a vehicle is worth exactly what it delivers. Labour aimed at the mouth serves comfort and certainty, needs of the personality that reset the moment they are met. The belief that fullness sits one acquisition ahead sets a state of permanent hunger, hunger drives more work, and the work compounds into decades of motion with no arrival.
Growth and contribution are the needs that do not empty overnight, because they change a person rather than top him up. A man who never moves his labour onto them ends where he started, still hungry, with the years already spent.
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Live Ecclesiastes 6:7 today
- Before you add one more thing to the cart, the plate or the calendar today, say what would be enough and then stop at it.
- Spend an hour of your day on something that only helps someone else and cannot be traded back to you.
- When the urge hits to check, snack or scroll in a tense moment at work, name what you are actually hungry for before you reach, and then choose.
What am I feeding that has only ever gotten hungrier?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · Dhammapada
Craving is a river with no far bank. Fed, it widens. The only thing that ends the thirst is stopping the pouring.
Tao Te Ching 46
There is no calamity like not knowing what is enough. Whoever knows contentment is rich, no matter the size of the pile.
Stoicism · Seneca
Seneca wrote that it is not the person with little who is poor but the person who craves more. Poverty in line with nature is wealth, and wealth with no limit is poverty.
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