Times

Choon-Leong Seow has some helpful comments about the “time for this, time for that” poem in Ecclesiastes 3. He points out that the thrust of the section is about God’s control of times and portions. As evidence, he notes that the word “season” us normally used “of predetermined or appointed time.” More fundamentally, while the section recognizes the reality of human action (describing man as “the doer” in 3:9), the accent is on God’s action: “The word ‘sh ‘to do, work, make, act’ is used repeatedly of God, who is also mentioned several times in vv. 10-15: it is God who has made . . . everything (v 11); people cannot discover the deed . . . that God has done . . . from the beginning to the end (v 11); what God does . . . is ‘eternal’ (v 14); and God has acted . . . that people might be reverent before God (v 14). The only thing that the human is able to do . . . is to find pleasure in life (v 12), but even that is a gift of God (v 13).” The “everything” that God does in v 11 echoes with the “everything’ of v 1, and v 11 also refers to “time” (cf. v 1): “God is the one responsible for bringing about everything in its time.”

Seow offers the following explanation of “eternity in the heart”: “The preoccupation that God has given to people ot keep them in their place is this ‘eternity’ in their hearts that inevitably confronts the reality of each moment. That is the irony of the human’s situation. Humanity can expect to know the appropriateness of what God has done only in its moment, in its time, but one cannot hope to discover what God has done ‘from the beginning to the end’ (v 11). Qohelet is thinking here of the effort of people ot bypass the moment in order to grasp the totality of existence. Mortals cannot discover that sort of thing, however. Humanity knows of eternity, but can only cope with activities in their time. The eternity in human hearts only serves to underscore the ephemerality of the moment that each person experiences.”