Ecclesiastes 3
New Catholic Bible
Chapter 3
A Time for Everything[a]
1 For everything there is a season,
and a time[b] for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to tear down, and a time to build up.
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.
6 A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to discard.
7 A time to tear, and a time to mend;
a time to be silent, and a time to speak.
8 A time to love, and a time to hate:
a time for war, and a time for peace.
9 What gain does the worker have from his toil? 10 I have observed the tasks that God has designated to keep men occupied. 11 He has made everything suitable for its time, and he has given men a sense of past and future,[c] but they never have the slightest comprehension of what God has wrought from beginning to end.
12 I understand that man’s greatest happiness is to be glad and do well throughout his life. 13 And when we eat and drink and find satisfaction in all our labors, this is a gift of God.
14 I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it or subtracted from it. God has done this so that everyone will be in awe standing in his presence.
15 Whatever is now has already been,
that which is to come already is,
and God will restore whatever might be displaced.
16 The Problem of Retribution.[d] Moreover, I observed something else under the sun:
Where justice should be, there was wickedness,
and iniquity was in the place of righteousness.
17 But I remained confident in my belief
that God will judge both the righteous and the wicked,
for he has appointed a time for every matter
and he will issue a judgment on every work.
18 I said to myself that in dealing with men it is God’s purpose to test them in order to show them that they are animals. 19 For the fate of men and beasts is identical: as the one dies, so does the other. They all have the same life-breath, and man has no advantage over the beast in this regard. For everything is vanity. 20 All go to the same place: all were made from the dust, and to the dust all will return.
21 Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of an animal goes downward to the earth?[e] 22 And so I came to realize that there is nothing better for man than to enjoy his work, since that is his lot. No one has the power to let him see what will happen after he is gone.
Footnotes
- Ecclesiastes 3:1 Our mortality is neither chastisement nor recompense but only the mystery of the human condition. We participate better in God’s creation when we accept each moment as a gift.
- Ecclesiastes 3:1 Time: which is appointed by God (see Ps 31:16; Prov 16:1-9).
- Ecclesiastes 3:11 Given . . . a sense of past and future: or “has set eternity in their heart.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:16 By themselves human beings cannot decide anything about the last fate of the just and the unjust except that all must entrust themselves to God. Once again, only the present is accessible to human vision, and all the rest is a mystery.
- Ecclesiastes 3:21 Qoheleth expresses doubt about the final state of the human spirit, but by the end of the Book it is resolved: “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Eccl 12:7). The answer was revealed gradually (see Pss 16:9-11; 49:16; 73:23-26; Isa 26:19; Dan 12:2-3) and fully revealed by Jesus who “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:10).
Ecclesiastes 3
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.
2 There is a time to be born
and a time to die.
There is a time to plant
and a time to pull up plants.
3 There is a time to kill
and a time to heal.
There is a time to destroy
and a time to build.
4 There is a time to cry
and a time to laugh.
There is a time to be sad
and a time to dance with joy.
5 There 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.
6 There 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.
7 There is a time to tear cloth
and a time to sew it.
There is a time to be silent
and a time to speak.
8 There 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
9 Do people really gain anything from their hard work? 10 I saw all the hard work God gave us to do. 11 God 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.
12 I learned that the best thing for people to do is to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live. 13 God wants everyone to eat, drink, and enjoy their work. These are gifts from God.
14 I 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. 15 What 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]
16 I also saw these things in this life[d]: I saw that the courts should be filled with goodness and fairness, but there is evil there now. 17 So I said to myself, “God has planned a time for everything, and he has planned a time to judge everything people do. He will judge good people and bad people.”
Are People Like Animals?
18 I thought about what people do to each other. And I said to myself, “God wants people to see that they are like animals. 19 The same thing happens to animals and to people—they die. People and animals have the same ‘breath.’[e] Is a dead animal different from a dead person? It is all so senseless! 20 The bodies of people and animals end the same way. They came from the earth, and, in the end, they will go back to the earth. 21 Who knows what happens to a person’s spirit? Who knows if a human’s spirit goes up to God while an animal’s spirit goes down into the ground?”
22 So I saw that the best thing people can do is to enjoy what they do, because that is all they have. Besides, no one can help another person see what will happen in the future.
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.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:16 in this life Literally, “under the sun.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:19 breath Or “spirit.”
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International