A time for everything
1 There is a given time for everything and a time for every happening under heaven:
2 A time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for plant ing, a time for uprooting.
3 A time for killing, a time for healing; a time for knocking down, a time for building.
4 A time for tears, a time for laugh ter; a time for mourning, a time for dancing.
5 A time for throwing stones, a time for gathering stones; a time for embracing, a time to refrain from em bracing.
6 A time for searching, a time for losing; a time for keeping, a time for throwing away.
7 A time for tearing, a time for sewing; a time to be silent and a time to speak.
8 A time for loving, a time for hating; a time for war, a time for peace.
9 What profit is there for a man from all his toils?
10 Finally I considered the task God gave to the humans.
11 He made everything fitting in its time, but he also set eternity in their hearts, although man is not able to embrace the work of God from the beginning to the end.
12 I know that there is nothing better for him to do than to seek pleasure and well-being during his life.
13 To eat, drink and find satisfaction in his work is a gift from God.
14 I know that everything God does remains forever; there is nothing to add, nothing to take from it. Yet God has ordained that humans fear him.
15 What has happened comes again; what is now has already been; God recovers what has gone.
16 I have also seen under the sun, instead of justice, wickedness, and in the place of the just, the wicked.
17 And I said to myself, “God will judge the just and the wicked for there is a time for everything, and a judgment for every deed.”
18 I also thought about them, how God wants to test them and let them see that they themselves are animals.
19 For the destiny of man and animal is identical: death for one as for the other. Gen 2,7
20 Both have the same spirit; man has no superiority over animals for all pass away like wind. Both go to the same place, both come from dust and return to dust.
21 Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the beast descends earthward?
22 I under stood that the best man can do is to be happy in what he does, for that is his lot. For who will take him to see the beyond?
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Comments Eclesiastes (Qohelet), Chapter 3
• 3.1 Note verses 11-14 whose commentary is found in the introduction.
In the following chapters, Ecclesiastes looks at all aspects of the human condition, one after the other, beginning with the surest: death.
What is now has already been. See what was said with regard to 1:10. So, if all that humans build must be destroyed, what is left to them? That each of us must die, this we can accept, and it is not absurd if the world continues to be. Instead it is impossible to think that one day all must stop and forever die.
Yet this is the only perspective left to us from a materialist view of the universe. There will not even be someone to remember that humans did exist, suffer and love: no one can face such an eventuality.
• 18. Both have the same spirit… (v. 19). See Biblical Index 83. Let us not forget that God had not yet revealed what human destiny after death would be; when we read this text, we must not conclude that the spirit (since it is the same word as breath) dies with the body. With the New Testament, soul will signify that which does not die (Mt 10:28).
Who knows? Even for believers of our time, faith cannot destroy the natural fear of death. At certain moments at least, the death of our dear ones leaves us disoriented, just as does the certitude of our own death.