Reflections on Ecclesiastes 3

 

Ecclesiastes 03 (Contemporary English Version)


1. Everything on earth has its own time and its own season.
   
2. There is a time for birth and death, planting and reaping,
   
3. for killing and healing, destroying and building,
   
4. for crying and laughing, weeping and dancing,
   
5. for throwing stones and gathering stones, embracing and parting.
   
6. There is a time for finding and losing, keeping and giving,
   
7. for tearing and sewing, listening and speaking.
   
8. There is also a time for love and hate, for war and peace.
   
9. What do we gain by all of our hard work?
   
10. I have seen what difficult things God demands of us.
    
11. God makes everything happen at the right time. Yet none of us can ever fully understand all he has done, and he puts questions in our minds about the past and the future.
    
12. I know the best thing we can do is to always enjoy life,
    
13. because God's gift to us is the happiness we get from our food and drink and from the work we do.
    
14. Everything God has done will last forever; nothing he does can ever be changed. God has done all this, so that we will worship him.
    
15. Everything that happens has happened before, and all that will be has already been-- God does everything over and over again.
    
16. Everywhere on earth I saw violence and injustice instead of fairness and justice.
    
17. So I told myself that God has set a time and a place for everything. He will judge everyone, both the wicked and the good.
    
18. I know that God is testing us to show us that we are merely animals.
    
19. Like animals we breathe and die, and we are no better off than they are. It just doesn't make sense.
    
20. All living creatures go to the same place. We are made from earth, and we return to the earth.
    
21. Who really knows if our spirits go up and the spirits of animals go down into the earth?
    
22. We were meant to enjoy our work, and that's the best thing we can do. We can never know the future.
    

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The first of this chapter may be Solomon's version of "what goes around, comes around."  There are a couple of interpretations of this phrase. One is that a person's actions will often have consequences for that person. The other is that the status of things will eventually return to its original state after completing a certain cycle. It is this interpretation that is fitting for this chapter. Life is cyclical and whatever has happened will happen again and things go on. The word translated "activity" literally means “desire,” meaning that what man desires to do has its time. We have a longing in our hearts, though, that goes beyond this temporal nature of things that is eternal. We long to know what is outside and beyond this merry-go-round that is life. But "man cannot discover the work God has done from beginning to end." All he can do is to accept what God reveals and trust Him for the rest. We should simply consider it a gift of God when we can enjoy our efforts and the fruit of those efforts.

Many take exception, however, to the perfection of God's plan when they look at the injustice and oppression in the world. How could a just and loving God allow such things to happen? Solomon notes this as well in verse 16. But his response to it in verse 17 is that God does not let it pass. He says, "God will judge the righteous and the wicked, since there is a time for every activity and every work." Though there is a time for everything, not everything is appropriate for man to do. Yes, God will judge our actions, but why allow it in the first place? It is either that or leave man without the option of choice and to treat him as a puppet. Those who complain the loudest about a God who would allow injustice would complain just a loudly if that God did not give them the choice to do what they want to do. However, it is those choices we make that bring about the injustice in the world - not God.

Then Solomon returns to the futility of life comparing man's fate to that of the animals. Both die. Both return to the dust. But it is only man who is judged for his actions. What about man's fate beyond the grave? Solomon states man's inability to observe whether man's spirit "rises upward." He is not necessarily questioning this as a reality, only that man cannot observe it and be certain beyond a doubt that it is true. Therefore, his conclusion is that man should enjoy what he knows to be true. That is, to enjoy his activities, for that is his reward. This is a rather negative view with which I would not agree. Solomon acknowledges earlier that man has in him a sense of the eternal which I believe is put there by God as confirmation that there is more beyond the grave. Man seeks that 'more' not knowing where to find it until he turns to God who fills that void and makes eternal life a possibility for those who seek life in Him.

Solomon ponders questions that most thoughtful persons ponder at some point in life. Many never find the answers, willfully refusing to accept whatever answer they might find in God. But it is only in Him that answers of an eternal nature will be found.