_To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose_ The two Hebrew nouns stand to each other in much the same relation as the Greek χρόνος and καιρός, the former expressing a period of duration, the latter the appointed time at which an event happens. Accepting this view, the words "seas... [ Continue Reading ]
_A time to be born_ Literally, A TIME TO BEAR. It should be noted that in Hebrew MSS. and printed texts, the list of Times and Seasons appears in two parallel columns, as if forming a kind of rhythmical catalogue, what the Greeks called a συστοιχία, or Table of Contrasts. It seems at first strange t... [ Continue Reading ]
_a time to kill, and a time to heal_ The first group had brought together natural death and natural birth. This includes in the induction the death which man inflicts in battle or single combat, in attack or self-defence, or in administering justice, and with it the verb that includes all the resour... [ Continue Reading ]
_a time to weep_ The two couples are naturally grouped together, the first taking in the natural spontaneous expression of individual feeling, the second the more formal manifestation of the feelings in the mourners and wailers of a funeral (Zechariah 12:10, where the same verb is found) and the dan... [ Continue Reading ]
_A time to cast away stones_ The vagueness of the phrase has naturally given rise to conjectural interpretations. It seems obvious that the words cannot be a mere reproduction of Ecclesiastes 3:4 and therefore that the "casting away" and the "gathering" of stones must refer to something else than pu... [ Continue Reading ]
_A time to get, and a time to lose_ The getting or the losing refer primarily, we can scarcely doubt, to what we call property. There are times when it is better and wiser to risk the loss of all we have rather than to set our minds on acquiring more. Something like this lesson we have in our Lord's... [ Continue Reading ]
_A time to rent, and a time to sew_ The words are commonly connected with the practice of rending the garments as a sign of sorrow (Genesis 37:29; Genesis 37:34; Genesis 44:13; Job 1:20; 2 Samuel 1:2) and sewing them up again when the season of mourning is past and men return again to the routine of... [ Continue Reading ]
_A time to love, and a time, to hate_ Greek thought again supplies us with a parallel, ἡμεῖς δὲ πῶς οὐ γνωσόμεσθα σωφρονεῖν ; ἐγὼ δʼ, ἐπίσταμαι γὰρ ἀρτίως ὅτι ὅ τʼ ἐχθρὸς ἡμῖν ἐς τοσόνδʼ ἐχθαρτέος, ὡς καὶ φιλήσων αὖθις, ἔς τε τὸν φίλον τοσαῦθʼ ὑπουργῶν ὠφελεῖν βουλήσομαι, ὡς αἰὲν οὑ μενοῦντα.... [ Continue Reading ]
_What profit hath he that worketh?_ The long induction is completed, and yet is followed by the same despairing question as that of ch. Ecclesiastes 1:3, asked as from a stand-point that commands a wider horizon. Does not this very thought of a right season for every action increase the difficulty o... [ Continue Reading ]
_I have seen the travail, which God hath given_ Better perhaps, I HAVE SEEN THE LABOUR, or THE BUSINESS. As before, in the preceding verse, the thinker, once back in the old groove of thought, repeats himself, and we have the very words of ch. Ecclesiastes 1:13, but, as before, here also developed b... [ Continue Reading ]
_He hath made every thing beautiful in his time_ Better, as removing the ambiguity of the possessive pronoun in modern English ears, "in its time." The thinker rests for a time in the primeval faith of Israel that all things were created "very good" (Genesis 1:31), in the Stoic thought of a divine s... [ Continue Reading ]
_for a man to rejoice, and to do good_ There is no instance in O. T. language of the phrase "do good" being used, like the Greek εὖ πράττειν, in the sense of "prospering," or "enjoying one's self," and in ch. Ecclesiastes 7:20 it can only have its full ethical meaning, such as it has in Psalms 34:14... [ Continue Reading ]
_And also that every man_ The addition of this clause confirms the interpretation just given of the "doing good" of the preceding verse. Had that meant simply enjoyment, this clause would have been an idle repetition. As it is, "doing good" takes its place, as it did with the nobler Epicureans, amon... [ Continue Reading ]
_I know that, whatsoever God doeth_ We ask once again whether we are brought face to face with the thought of an iron destiny immutably fixing even the seeming accidents of life, and excluding man's volition from any share in them, or whether the writer speaks of an order which men may, in the exerc... [ Continue Reading ]
_God requireth that which is past_ Better, SEEKS AFTER THAT WHICH IS PUT TO FLIGHT. The old thought of the uniformity of sequence in nature and in history which had before seemed oppressive in its monotony, has been balanced by the thought of God's perfection and the beauty of His order, and by the... [ Continue Reading ]
_I saw under the sun the place of judgment_ The Hebrew gives slightly different forms of the same noun, so as to gain the emphasis, without the monotony, of iteration, where the A.V. has the needless variation of "wickedness" and "iniquity." Either word will do, but it should be the same in both cla... [ Continue Reading ]
_God shall judge the righteous and the wicked_ The words "I said in my heart" introduce this as the first thought that rises unbidden at the sight of the wrong-doing in the world. It was, as it were, an immediate intuitive judgment, as distinguished from those which are introduced by "I returned," o... [ Continue Reading ]
_I said in mine heart_ The word "estate" expresses fairly the meaning of the Hebrew noun, which may be rendered "word," "matter," or "subject." In the next clause for "that God might manifest them," we may better read, THAT GOD MIGHT SEPARATE, SIFT, OR TRY THEM, _i.e._in modern phrase, He leaves the... [ Continue Reading ]
_that which befalleth the sons of men_ More accurately, CHANCE ARE THE SONS OF MEN; CHANCE IS THE BEAST; ONE CHANCE IS TO BOTH OF THEM. The thought is emphasized by the threefold iteration of the depressing word. As so often throughout the book, we have an echo, almost a verbal translation, of a Gre... [ Continue Reading ]
_All go unto one place_ The "place" thus spoken of is not the _Sheol_of the Hebrews or the _Hades_of the Greeks, which implied, however vaguely, some notion of a shadowy disembodied existence, for the souls of men as distinct from those of brutes, but simply the earth as at once the mother, the nour... [ Continue Reading ]
_Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward_ The words imply a strictly sceptical rather than a negative answer. They do not actually deny, still less do they affirm, as some have thought, that the spirit of man does ascend to a higher life, while that of the brute returns to dust. This would i... [ Continue Reading ]
_Wherefore I perceive_ The lesson of a tranquil regulated Epicureanism with its blending of healthy labour and calm enjoyment, is enforced as the conclusion from our ignorance of what comes after death, as before it flowed from the experience of life (ch. Ecclesiastes 2:24). Who knows whether we sha... [ Continue Reading ]