Ecclesiastes 3

There Is a Time for Everything

¹There is a right time for everything.

Everything on earth has its special season.

²There is a time to be born

and a time to die.

There is a time to plant

and a time to pull up plants.

³There is a time to kill

and a time to heal.

There is a time to destroy

and a time to build.

⁴There is a time to cry

and a time to laugh.

There is a time to be sad

and a time to dance.

⁵There is a time to throw away stones

and a time to gather them.

There is a time to hug

and a time not to hug.

⁶There is a time to look for something

and a time to stop looking for it.

There is a time to keep things

and a time to throw things away.

⁷There is a time to tear apart

and a time to sew together.

There is a time to be silent

and a time to speak.

⁸There is a time to love

and a time to hate.

There is a time for war

and a time for peace.

⁹Does a person really gain anything from his work?

¹⁰I saw the hard work God has given us to do.

¹¹God has also given us a desire to know the future. God certainly does everything at just the right time. But we can never completely understand what he is doing.

¹²So I realize that the best thing for people is to be happy. They should enjoy themselves as long as they live.

¹³God wants everyone to eat and drink and be happy in his work. These are gifts from God.

¹⁴I know anything God does will continue forever. People cannot add anything to what God has done. And they cannot take anything away from it. God does it this way to cause people to honor him.

¹⁵What happens now has also happened in the past.

Things that will happen in the future have also happened before.

God makes the same things happen again and again.

¹⁶I also saw this here on earth:

Where there should have been justice, there was evil.

Where there should have been fairness, there was wickedness.

¹⁷I certainly believe that

God has planned a time for every thing and every action.

He will judge both good people and bad people.

¹⁸But I decided that God leaves it the way it is to test people. He wants to show them they are just like animals.

¹⁹The same thing happens to animals and to people. They both have the same breath. So they both die. People are no better off than the animals. The lives of both are soon gone.

²⁰Both end up the same way. Both came from dust. And both will go back to dust.

²¹Who can be sure that the spirit of man goes up to God? Or who can be sure that the spirit of an animal goes down into the ground?

²²So I saw the best thing a person can do is to enjoy his work. That is all he has. No one can help a person see what will happen in the future.