Ecclesiasteschapter 3
22 verses · BSBEcclesiastes book hub →
Speaks with:Ecclesiastes 3×3Ecclesiastes 1×3Ecclesiastes 12×3Psalms 49×3Matthew 16×2Ecclesiastes 8×2
Summary
Chapter summary
'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven': birth and death, planting and plucking, weeping and laughing, war and peace: fourteen pairs. 'He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done.' Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever. As for the sons of men, they and the beasts share one breath and one dust (the honest limit of what is seen 'under the sun') therefore rejoice in thy works, for that is thy portion.
Context
Poetry · Solomon — Ecclesiastes overview
- A. 1–8 To Everything There Is a Season
- B. 9–15 He Hath Set Eternity in Their Heart
- C. 16–22 Man and Beast Go Unto One Place
The outline
A.To Everything There Is a Seasonvv. 1 to 8
Read vv. 1 to 8 →B.He Hath Set Eternity in Their Heartvv. 9 to 15
Read vv. 9 to 15 →C.Man and Beast Go Unto One Placevv. 16 to 22
Read vv. 16 to 22 →
The world behind this chapter
Ecclesiastes 3The history
The poem of times is built out of the actual rhythm of that world. "A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted" follows the agricultural year exactly: sowing after the early rains, harvest in spring and early summer, and the uprooting of a failed or finished crop.
"A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together" has two likely referents, both concrete. Clearing stones off a terrace to make it workable and gathering them to build the retaining wall is one. The other is warfare: an invading army ruined a field by covering it with stones, which is exactly what Israel is recorded doing to Moab.
"A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak" describes mourning customs. A bereaved person tore his outer garment at the news, sat in silence — visitors were expected to say nothing until the mourner spoke first — and the tear was later stitched up when the mourning period ended.
"I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there." The place of judgment is the bench at the city gate. The complaint is not abstract: the writer is saying he went to the courthouse and found the corruption sitting in the judge's seat.
What it meant to them
"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh." The word rendered "world" carries the sense of the long stretch of time — eternity. Hearers bound to a seasonal calendar were being told they had been given a sense of something far larger than the calendar, and no way to see the whole of it.
The chapter's honest ending was startling in a culture full of confident afterlife machinery next door in Egypt: who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward? The writer does not pretend to more certainty than he has, and lands on doing your work and eating your bread as a gift from God.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ecclesiastes 3. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.