A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up;
This verse pairs killing with healing, and tearing down with building up. On its own it can sound like fate or an excuse, so commentators ask two things: who fixes these seasons, and how should a person live inside them?
"Under the sun"
One phrase runs through the whole book and frames this list of times. It marks what the book is looking at: life on earth as man sees it, in the old creation.
We believe the key to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, and to the whole book, is the expression "under the sun." In this book the Spirit of God has given us a commentary on everything under the sun. It is a vivid picture of the old creation, and of man in the middle of it. "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. This is the law of the old creation.
Who arranges the times
The pairs are not random. Man is under a hand that arranges the things that touch his life most closely.
However great man's misery may be, he cannot help seeing one thing. He is under a system that orders, by God's providence, everything which most closely affects the changing life he lives now. No creature under the heavens is so exposed or so sensitive to sorrow. And on his guilty conscience there dawns the awful thought of what may and must come after death.
So how should a person meet a time to kill or a time to break down? Not by fighting it.
Man's anxious toil can alter none of the facts. God's hand arranges; man's place is to bow. Cain rebelled and gained nothing but bitter loss, and many others have taken the way of Cain with the same result. Man likes to rule, and being fallen, sinful, and wilful has not made him like it less. But no creature can rule rightly unless he serves One who is over him, over all persons and all things.
Each thing gets a time — and only a time
The word "time" is itself a limit: every season here runs out. Behind those passing seasons another work goes on.
"Times" measure everything under the sun. Whatever purpose people take in hand under heaven, each has its time, but only its "time." It is not "for ever." Its time passes on and is gone… But beneath the struggles of these times there is a "work that God makes from the beginning to the end"… and this work, done in ways of infinite wisdom, is "for ever."
Why the changes come
These changes are counted and deliberate. And the writer of Ecclesiastes traced them back to God.
The book names twenty-eight "times," beginning with the time of birth and ending with the time for peace. Everything has a fixed time: life–death; seeding–harvesting; killing–healing; breaking down–building up; weeping–laughing; mourning–dancing, and so on. These are the times of the whole race. That is what human life is… The writer of Ecclesiastes recognises that all this trouble must be from God. God has produced these never-ceasing changes, so that they might work on men's hearts.
Reading the season you are in
If each act has its right moment, wisdom is knowing which moment you are in. One writer sees this in Abraham.
Everything, as we read, is beautiful in its season. There is a time to build, and a time to pull down. There was a time for Abraham to be still, and a time for Abraham to be active; a time to be silent, and a time to break silence. And he understood the time. Like the men of Issachar afterwards, he knew the time, and what Israel ought to do. God's principles were Abraham's rules.
Where the passage is abused
People quote this list to excuse whatever they want, claiming there is a time for everything. One writer answers that the believer's life is not ruled by these swings at all.
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 world, and his goal "above the sun" — in that "new creation" of which Christ is the Head and the Centre, and in which "all things are of God." We have often heard Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 abused in the way you mention. But it has always been by people whose hearts are in this present evil world, and who are bold enough to quote Scripture in defence of their worldliness.
Summary
- Appointed. God's hand arranges killing and healing, tearing down and building up. Man's anxious toil changes none of it.
- Measured. Each purpose gets a time, and only a time; it passes, while the work God does runs on for ever.
- Balanced. Under the sun God sets one thing against another — a tear for every smile — and that is the law of the old creation.
- Exercising. God sends the twenty-eight changing seasons to work on human hearts, not to leave them comfortable.
- Discerned. Wisdom is knowing which season you stand in, as Abraham did. But the believer's centre stays above the sun, in the "one thing I do" — never in an excuse for worldliness.