Ecclesiastes 3:1–4:16: God as Master of Time and Its Consequences for Life in the World
This section begins with one of the other well-known sayings from Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). The following series of antithetical pairs underscores the poem’s opening claim: there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace (Ecclesiastes3:2–8). The irony, writes our author, is that to God we owe this discernible order in creation along with our awareness of it, yet God has withheld from us the capacity to make any advantage of this awareness: the timing for all of these things—birth and death, planting and harvesting, love and hate, war and peace—is determined wholly by God, and we live at the mercy of the patterns God dictates (Ecclesiastes 3:9–11). In light of this the author advises his audience once more to eat, drink, and be happy and to take pleasure in toil itself, for God permits such incomplete awareness of the pattern of human existence, not to provide the key to success, but to induce our awe at his majesty (vv. 12–15)! To drive home the pointlessness of trying to decipher the nature of human existence through calculations built from what God does reveal, the author goes on to observe that often where justice and righteousness should prevail by any reasonable standard, wickedness rules instead (v. 16; on the contradictory tenor of v. 17, see “Critical Issues” below). Furthermore, all of this is so because God means to prove to humans that they are no better than animals; both live and die just the same (vv. 18–21). All good that is left to humans, then, is to enjoy what good comes to them in life (v. 22).
The argument of 4:1–16 follows, then, with a certain logical consistency: since the best in human life is to enjoy the good when it comes, everything else we may consider to be worthwhile is relative. Productive work, though its fruits are perhaps to be enjoyed, is done out of envy (vv. 4–6), and those who have no children cannot even count on heirs to enjoy the fruit of their labors (vv. 7–8). Companionship is perhaps a salve for the sorrows entailed in human existence, and it will be of help when trouble is faced, but it too does not overcome the weariness of life (vv. 9–12). And the gaining of a great reputation and the power to lead many only lasts so long as the life of the one who achieves such status; it too evanesces with the passing of the person (vv. 13–16). Thus the dead who face no more such things are better off than the living, and those who have not existed at all are best off (vv. 1–3).
Robert A. Kugler and Patrick J. Hartin, An Introduction to the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 213–214.
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