To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens
Ecclesiastes 3 opens by turning from the search for profit to a set clock: every human matter has its own season. The question the commentators press is whose clock it is, and what a person is meant to do while living under it.
A Life Ordered by God
Commentators read this verse as the answer to the misery of man's life. Sorrow reaches him, and death troubles his conscience. Still, he sees one thing:
Think of how miserable man is. No creature under the heavens is so open to sorrow, or feels it so sharply. His guilty conscience wakes up to what may come, and must come, after death. Yet he cannot help seeing something else too. He lives under a system in which God orders everything that touches this changing life of ours most closely. The verses that follow set this out in full.
A Season, and Only a Season
The verse gives each thing a time — and that is also its limit. One writer contrasts what time measures with what God does:
Everything under the sun runs by "times." There is a time to be born, and a time to die. Whatever purpose people take in hand under heaven, each has its time, but only its "time." It is not "for ever," and its time passes on and is gone... But under all these passing times there is a "work that God does from the beginning to the end"... God does that work in ways of endless wisdom, and it lasts "for ever." "I perceive that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it."
A reference work makes the same point about the reach of our understanding: man's life is fenced in by time, while God's is not.
Man learns that he lives in time: there is a time for everything "under the heaven," but only "a time."... No one "can find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." God is working out His own end while this time lasts: man lives in time, but what God does will last for ever.
Man's Place Is to Bow
If the seasons are set, no effort can move them. That leaves man one place to take.
Man's anxious toil can change none of the facts. God's hand arranges; man's place is to bow... Man likes to rule, and he likes it no less now that he is fallen, sinful, and set on his own way. But we are creatures. No one can rule well unless he first serves the One who is above him, above all persons and all things. To fear Him is the beginning of wisdom; to forget Him, and above all to deny Him, is folly, ruinous now and for ever.
The same writer adds elsewhere that this danger reaches everyone, and that God has not hidden His own aim.
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." Man — whether Israelite or Christian — is likely to make mistakes. Besides, his true place is subjection and obedience. God Himself has an aim before Him which He sets before us.
Under the Sun — and Above It
One writer treats the words "under the sun" as the key to the whole passage. He also warns that people have used these verses to excuse a worldly life. He sets these balanced seasons against a life with one single object:
"Under the sun" there is a time for everything. God has set one thing over against another. If there is a birth, there is a death; if there is a smile, there is a tear; the sorrow stands over against the joy... But look at Paul in Philippians 3. Did he have "a time for everything"? No. "One thing I do," he says. And why? Because he had found his life, his sphere, and his object "above the sun"... We have often heard Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 twisted this way. But it is always by people whose hearts are in this present evil world.
Waiting for the Right Season
If the timing belongs to God, then waiting is not wasted. One writer applies this to seasons of trouble:
David says, "My times are in your hand." If our times were in our own hand, we would be rescued too soon. If they were in our enemy's hand, we would be rescued too late... God's time is always best. "He has made everything beautiful in its time": when the mercy is ripe, we will have it... Deliverance may be later than our time; but it will not be later than God's time.
Summary
- Ordered. Life is not random. Behind the changing seasons is a system in which God "orders everything that touches this changing life of ours most closely."
- Limited. Each thing gets its time — "but only its 'time.'" Seasons expire; only what God does endures for ever.
- Bounded. Man "lives in time," so he cannot trace God's work from beginning to end.
- Submitted. Since "God's hand arranges," the wise response is to bow, not to force a season open. Fearing Him is where wisdom starts.
- Anchored. The balanced pairs are the rule "under the sun." Those who find their object above it can say with Paul, "One thing I do." They can wait, because "God's time is always best."