Ecclesiastes 3:17

I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.

Solution.

God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for (there is) a time. There is a looming judgment in which God will vindicate His righteous ways. The sinner's "time" of his unrighteous "work" is short. God also has His "time" and "work" of judgment; and, meanwhile, is overruling, for good at last, what seems now dark. Man cannot now "find out" the plan of God's ways (; ). If judgment instantly followed every sin, there would be no scope for free will, faith, and the perseverance of saints in spite of difficulties. The previous darkness will make the light at last the more glorious.

There (Job 3:17) - in eternity, in the presence of the Divine Judge, opposed to the "there," in the human place of judgment (); so "from thence" (). The Preacher points away from earth to heaven. The judgment on the wicked in behalf of the just may be looked for with the more confidence when the wicked are in authority. For the seat of judicial authority is God's; He cannot leave unpunished its abuse. The greater persecution as saints we endure from the ungodly in power, the surer is our coming deliverance (; Psalms 82:1); the persecution is 'a manifest token' of it, because God's justice binds Him to it ().