A Season for Everything

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up....

-- Ecclesiastes 3: 1-3 (KJV)

If you're humming "Turn Turn Turn" and wondering how all this talk of killing and breaking got into a song by the peacenik Pete Seeger, meet Ecclesiastes, biblical tunesmith. Though Seeger did do a little embellishing ("A time for peace, I swear it's not too late"), to his credit he preserved some of Ecclesiastes' rawer sentiments, which are central to the meaning of the book. Ecclesiastes really meant that there is a "season" (proper time) for everything -- death as well as birth, destruction as well as creation, hate as well as love.

Unfortunately, you're never going to be able to predict the right season for anything. It is God who disposes time, and it is beyond man to know its pattern, either in the past or in the future: "no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end" (3: 11). That God creates a season for evil as well as for good is another mystery, and it's no use blaming him if you think the season of your reward, or your enemy's punishment, is long past due. Ecclesiastes harps on his theme: you can't know anything important, and you can't do anything to secure your future. So relax.

This text was apparently dear to President John F. Kennedy, as it was read at his funeral -- though most Americans felt that event came out of season.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!