SUMMARY
Everything happens in its own time. This theme, common to the wisdomWisdom encompasses the qualities of experience, knowledge, and good judgment. The Old Testament book of Proverbs, which sometimes invokes a Woman as the personification of Wisdom, is a collection of aphorisms and moral teachings. Along with other biblical passages, it teaches, "The fear of the... More tradition, is spelled out here most fully.
ANALYSIS
This is the most well-known passage in Ecclesiastes. It is known, for example, from the Pete Seeger song of 1954, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” The point is that there is a right time for everything. The Teacher develops the idea with fourteen balancing pairs. Farmers know that there is a time for planting and for harvesting (3:2). Verse 3 appears to refer to wartime and verse 4 to the happiness and the tears that mark human lives. One of the concerns of Wisdom literature is to determine when it is time to speak and when it is time to keep silent (Proverbs 25:11; Ecclesiastes 3:7). The Teacher has noted something problematic here: we humans cannot determine or control these times. This is most evident in the first pairing; no one has anything to say about the time when he or she is born. God determines these times, and humans “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (v. 11).
