Everything Has Its Season — Ecclesiastes

The chapter opens with a poem that many people know. To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. There is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal, to break down and to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh, to mourn and to dance. A time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace. Then comes the question the poem was leading to: what profit has the worker in all his labour?

The Preacher says God has made everything beautiful in its time, and has set the world in the human heart. Yet no one can find out the work God does from the beginning to the end. So he decides that the best a person can do is rejoice, do good, and enjoy the fruit of their labour, which he calls the gift of God. Whatever God does lasts for ever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it, so that people will fear before him.

Then he looks at the places where judgement and righteousness should be, and finds wickedness there. He tells himself that God will judge both the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every purpose. He also thinks God means people to see that they are beasts. The same thing happens to both: as one dies, so dies the other, and they all have one breath. All go to one place, made of dust and turning to dust again. Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, he asks, and the spirit of the beast that goes down to the earth?

He does not answer. He says only that there is nothing better than for a person to rejoice in their own works, for that is their portion. And who can bring anyone to see what will happen after them?