Ecclesiastes 3

God Has Ordained the Ebb and Flow of Human Activities

1For everything there is an appointed time, a time for every matter under heaven:

2a time to bear and a time to die;[#Or “a time to be born”; MT reads the active form “to bear children”]

3a time to kill and a time to heal;

4a time to weep and a time to laugh;

5a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones;

6a time to seek and a time to lose;

7a time to tear and a time to sew;

8a time to love and a time to hate;

9What does the worker gain in his toil?

No One Understands God’s Mysterious Plan

10I have seen the busyness God gives to humans to preoccupy them.[#Literally “the sons of the man”; #Or “to be busy”]

11He has made everything suitable in its time. He also has put the past in their hearts, yet no one can grasp what God does from the beginning to the end.[#Literally “eternity”]

12So I realized that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and enjoy themselves during their lives.[#Literally “no good”; #Literally “to rejoice and to do good”]

13And for anyone to eat and drink, that is, to enjoy the fruit of all his toil, this also is a gift of God.[#Literally “to see good in all his toil”]

14I know everything God does endures forever;

15What is—it already was,

God’s Mysterious Plan Allows Injustice to Exist in the World

16I saw something else under the sun: instead of justice there was evil; instead of righteousness there was wickedness.

17So I said to myself, “God will surely judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time of judgment for every deed and every work.”[#Literally “in my heart”; #The MT reads שָׁם “there,” but repointing to שָׂם, “he has appointed,” makes better sense]

18I said to myself concerning humans, “God sifts them in order to show them that they are like beasts.”[#Literally “the sons of the man”; #Or “tests”; #The MT reads active “to see,” but causative “to show” is reflected by LXX, Syriac Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate]

19For the fate of humans and the fate of the beast is the same. The death of the one is like the death of the other, for both are mortal. Man has no advantage over the beast, for both are fleeting.[#Literally “the sons of the man”; #Literally “is one”; #Literally “and one breath is for all”]

20Both go to one place—both came from dust and both return to dust.

21For no one knows whether the spirit of a human ascends to heaven and whether the spirit of the beast descends to the ground!

22So I concluded that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy the fruit of his labor, for this is his lot in life. For no one knows what will happen in the future.[#Literally “For who can bring him to see in what will be after him?”]

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