gain that is really left over: the surplus or edge that remains once the full cost of the effort has been counted
This is a bookkeeping word that a philosopher borrowed. It belongs to a family of Hebrew words built on the idea of what is left over, and it names the balance that actually remains when everything has been paid out. All ten of its appearances in the Hebrew Bible are in Ecclesiastes. No other biblical writer uses it, so the whole weight of the word rests on one book's argument.
That argument runs along three lines:
- the blunt question form, "what gain does a person get from all the work he does?", which the book never answers yes
- the comparison form, "wisdom has the edge over folly the way light has the edge over darkness", which the book does affirm
- one difficult verse about a whole country and what it draws from its farmland
The first two are not a contradiction, and holding them together is the key to the word. The book's speaker, the Teacher, denies that there is any permanent bottom line to a human life lived under the sun: whatever a person piles up, death empties the column. He never denies that some ways of living pay better than others here and now. Wisdom really is worth more than stupidity, a sharpened blade really does beat a dull one, and speaking at the right moment really does help. The word is the same; what changes is whether it is being asked to cover a lifetime or an afternoon.
So the word always carries a question mark. Wherever Ecclesiastes uses it, the reader is being asked to set a cost against a return and to notice how small the return turns out to be. Two relatives do neighboring work: another word for profit (מוֹתָר) says much the same thing and reaches outside Ecclesiastes into Proverbs, while a shorter word for what is left over (יֶתֶר) names the plain remainder with no reckoning attached.
Nuances
How to construe Ecclesiastes 5:9 (Hebrew 5:8), where יִתְרוֹן governs אֶרֶץ and is followed by בַּכֹּל הוּא and מֶלֶךְ לְשָׂדֶה נֶעֱבָד.
- contestedThe verse asserts that the produce of cultivated land is the benefit in which all share, the king included, so that even royal power rests on agriculture.; C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible 18C (New York: Doubleday, 1997), on 5:8
- contestedThe verse names the advantage a land enjoys, namely a king who is committed to cultivated fields, reading מֶלֶךְ לְשָׂדֶה נֶעֱבָד as the predicate of יִתְרוֹן אֶרֶץ.; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), on 5:8
- contestedThe syntax is too obscure for confident reconstruction, and the verse ranks among the most difficult in the book.; James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), on 5:8