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"There is nothing better for a man, than he should eat and drink, and that he should
make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of
God. For who can eat, or who can enjoy, WITHOUT HIM?" (2: 24, 25, Companion
Bible).
Chapter 3: opens with the well-known list of times and seasons for every purpose
under heaven. There is a real connection with the preceding argument, as the sequel
indicates (see 3: 9-17).
"To everything there is an appointed time (cf. Ezra 10: 14; Neh. 2: 6; Dan. 6: 10)
and a fitting time for every purpose under the heaven" (Eccles. 3: 1).
The word "purpose" here indicates something desired (see II Sam. 23: 5), or
delighted in (Psa. 1: 2), or pleasure (Eccles. 5: 4; 12: 1). It is not the purpose of God that
is under consideration, as we are still pursuing the great theme of the book. There is a
time to be born, and a time to die, and between these two events the whole round of
positive and negative purposes that constitute the daily round are filled in. Planting or
plucking up, killing or healing, getting and losing, loving and hating. The twenty-eight
items give the sum of human activity, and when it is all summed up, Koheleth says,
"What profit?"
If the affairs of men, with their profitless labours, are nevertheless regulated by a
fitting time, so also is the work of God; "He hath made everything beautiful in its own
time" (3: 11). What we must learn is that God's time is not man's time. Here is the time
for man's purposes, but Koheleth says:--
"I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time
THERE for every purpose and for every work" (3: 17).
The olam, the inscrutable character and indefinite length of the age, is "set in the heart
of man". The olam or age is the "time and season" for every purpose under heaven.
God's purpose, however, goes back before the age, and runs on after it has ended. Man
cannot "find out the work that God doeth from the beginning to the end" (3: 11). "I
know that whatsoever God doeth it shall be for the olam or age" (3: 14). God's work
goes on beyond the scope and sphere of man's work. "Nothing can be put to it nor
anything taken from it" (3: 14). How unlike man's work, which is spoiled by the "one
event" that happeneth to all. Left to other hands and hearts to waste and spoil, soon to be
cast into forgetfulness, its very memorial vanished, what a contrast with the work of God.
Man slaves for the temporal, God works for the olam, the age. The word olam or age
occurs seven times in Ecclesiastes, as follows:--
Olam.
A
| 1: 4. Generation pass, the earth abides.
B | 1: 10. Nothing new under the sun.
C | 2: 16. No memorial.
D | 3: 11. Set in their heart of man, to prevent full understanding.
C | 3: 14, 15. The past foreshadows the future.
B | 9: 6. No portion under the sun.
A | 12: 5. The passing generation, the "long" home.