A Time for Everything

Ecclesiastes 3 contains the most quoted passage in the book: the seasons poem. A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance. Fourteen pairs of opposites, structured with the rhythmic ‘and a time to’ that has carried readers across two and a half millennia.

But the chapter immediately presses the knife in. What gain has the worker from his toil? God has made everything beautiful in his time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can find out what God has done from beginning to end. The reader cannot choose his season. He can only recognise it after the fact. There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also is from the hand of God.

The chapter closes with the theme that will recur throughout: the same fate awaits humans and animals. Both are breath — hevel. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth? Qoheleth has no answer. He concludes: there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?