Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

Easy-to-Read Version

A Time for Everything

3 There is a right time for everything, and everything on earth will happen at the right time.

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 with joy.
⁵There is a time to throw weapons down
    and a time to pick them up.^[a]
There is a time to hug someone
    and a time to stop holding so tightly.
⁶There is a time to look for something
    and a time to consider it lost.
There is a time to keep things
    and a time to throw things away.
⁷There is a time to tear cloth
    and a time to sew it.
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.

God Controls His World

⁹Do people really gain anything from their hard work? ¹⁰I saw all the hard work God gave us to do. ¹¹God gave us the ability to think about his world,^[b] but we can never completely understand everything he does. And yet, he does everything at just the right time.

¹²I learned that the best thing for people to do is to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live. ¹³God wants everyone to eat, drink, and enjoy their work. These are gifts from God.

¹⁴I learned that anything God does will continue forever. People cannot add anything to the work of God, and they cannot take anything away from it. God did this so that people would respect him. ¹⁵What happened in the past has happened, and what will happen in the future will happen. But God wants to help those who have been treated badly.^[c]

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Footnotes

Ecclesiastes 3:5 Literally, “There is a time to throw stones away and a time to gather stones.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11 the ability … world Or “a desire to know the future.”
Ecclesiastes 3:15 Or “What happens now also happened in the past. What happens in the future has also happened before. God makes things happen again and again.”