Charles Ellicott Commentary Ecclesiastes 3:11

"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)

In his time.— In modern English, “its.”

The world.— The word here translated “world” has that meaning in post-Biblical Hebrew, but never elsewhere in the Old Testament, where it occurs over 300 times. And if we adopt the rendering “world,” it is difficult to explain the verse so as to connect it with the context. Where the word occurs elsewhere it means “eternity,” or “long duration,” and is so used in this book (Ecclesiastes 1:4; Ecclesiastes 1:10; Ecclesiastes 2:16; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Ecclesiastes 9:6; Ecclesiastes 12:5).

Taking this meaning of the word here (the only place where the word is used with the article), we may regard it as contrasted with that for “time,” or season, immediately before. Life exhibits a changing succession of weeping alternating with laughing, war with peace, and so forth. For each of these God has appointed its time or season, and in its season each is good. But man does not recognise this; for God has put in his heart an expectation and longing for abiding continuance of the same, and so he fails to understand the work which God does in the world.

So that no. —The connecting phrase here employed is rendered “because none” (Deuteronomy 9:28; 2 Kings 6:3; and others), “so that none” (Jeremiah 9:10; Zephaniah 3:6; and others).

End.—Ecclesiastes 7:2; Ecclesiastes 12:13; Joel 2:20; 2 Chronicles 20:16. A word belonging to the later Hebrew.