Albert Barnes Commentary Ecclesiastes 3
Albert Barnes Commentary
Ecclesiastes 3
Albert Barnes Commentary
Ecclesiastes 3
"For everything there is a season, and a time for very purpose under heaven:" — Ecclesiastes 3:1 (ASV)
Everything - More particularly, the actions of people (for example, his own, Ecclesiastes 2:1–8) and events which happen to people, the world of Providence rather than the world of creation. It would seem that most of his own works described in Ecclesiastes 2:1-8 were present to his mind. The rare word translated “season” means emphatically “fitting time” (Esther 9:27, Esther 9:31).
"a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;" — Ecclesiastes 3:5 (ASV)
Stones may be regarded either as materials for building, or as impediments to the fertility of land (see 2 Kings 3:19, 2 Kings 3:25; Isaiah 5:2).
"a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;" — Ecclesiastes 3:6 (ASV)
Get ... lose — Rather, seek, and a time to give up for lost.
"a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;" — Ecclesiastes 3:7 (ASV)
Rend - that is, Tear garments in sign of mourning or anger. See (2 Samuel 1:2), (2 Samuel 1:11 and following).
"He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end." — Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ASV)
Rather, He has made all (the travail, Ecclesiastes 3:10) beautiful (fit, in harmony with the whole work of God) in its time; also He has set eternity in their heart (that is, the heart of the sons of men, Ecclesiastes 3:10).
The word, translated “world” in the text, and “eternity” in this note, is used seven times in Ecclesiastes.
The interpretation “eternity” is conceived in the sense of a long indefinite period of time, in accordance with the use of the word throughout this book and the rest of the Old Testament. God has placed in the inborn constitution of man the capability of conceiving of eternity, the struggle to apprehend the everlasting, the longing after an eternal life.
With the other meaning, “the world,” that is, the material world or universe in which we dwell, the context is explained as referring either to the knowledge of the objects with which this world is filled or to the love of the pleasures of the world.
This meaning seems to be less in harmony with the context than the other. But the principal objection to it is that it assigns to the word in the original a sense which, although found in rabbinical Hebrew, it never bears in the language of the Old Testament.
So ... find - that is, without enabling man to find. Compare Ecclesiastes 7:13; Ecclesiastes 8:17.
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