Ecclesiastes 3:1-8·~1 min
To Everything There Is a Season
The Teacher declares that every event has its season, then unfolds that claim through a sequence of paired times: birth and death, planting and uprooting, weeping and laughter, silence and speech, love and hate, war and peace. The poem presents life's contrasting experiences as belonging within an ordered pattern that humans inhabit rather than govern.
T1o everything there is a season, 2a time to be born and a time to die, 3a time to kill and a time to heal, 4a time to weep and a time to laugh, 5a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, 6a time to search and a time to count as lost, 7a time to tear and a time to mend, 8a time to love and a time to hate,
Section summaryThe Teacher opens with a poem declaring that every matter under heaven has its appointed season, pairing life's opposite experiences within God's ordering of time. By listing births and deaths, mourning and dancing, war and peace, he shows that human life unfolds within rhythms that cannot be seized or frozen by human control.
Role in the chapterThis opening section establishes God's sovereign ordering of human times and sets the chapter's meditation on limits and providence.