Ecclesiastes 3:11

Ecclesiastes ETERNITY IN THE HEARTEcclesiastes 3:11 . There is considerable difficulty in understanding what precise meaning is to be attached to these words, and what precise bearing they have on the general course of the writer’s thoughts; but one or two things are, at any rate, quite clear. The Preacher has been enumerating all the various vicissitudes of prosperity and adversity, of construction and destruction, of society and solitude, of love and hate, for which there is scope and verge enough in one short human life; and his conclusion is, as it always is in the earlier part of this book, that because there is such an endless diversity of possible occupation, and each of them lasts but for a little time, and its opposite has as good a right of existence as itself; therefore, perhaps, it might be as well that a man should do nothing as do all these opposite things which neutralise each other, and the net result of which is nothing. If there be a time to be born and a time to die, nonentity would be the same when all is over. If there be a time to plant and a time to pluck, what is the good of planting? If there be a time for love and a time for hate, why cherish affections which are transient and may be succeeded by their opposites? And then another current of thought passes through his mind, and he gets another glimpse somewhat different, and says in effect, ‘No!

that is not all true-God has made all these different changes, and although each of them seems contradictory of the other, in its own place and at its own time each is beautiful and has a right to exist.’ The contexture of life, and even the perplexities and darknesses of human society, and the varieties of earthly condition-if they be confined within their own proper limits, and regarded as parts of a whole-they are all co-operant to an end. As from wheels turning different ways in some great complicated machine, and yet fitting by their cogs into one another, there may be a resultant direct motion produced even by these apparently antagonistic forces. But the second clause of our text adds a thought which is in some sense contrasted with this. The word rendered ‘world’ is a very frequent one in the Old Testament, and has never but one meaning, and that meaning is eternity . ‘He hath set eternity in their heart.’ Here, then, are two antagonistic facts. They are transient things, a vicissitude which moves within natural limits, temporary events which are beautiful in their season. But there is also the contrasted fact, that the man who is thus tossed about, as by some great battledore wielded by giant powers in mockery, from one changing thing to another, has relations to something more lasting than the transient.