a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
Parallel Translations
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a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
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A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
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A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (34)
Passages linked to Ecclesiastes 3:2 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Hebrews 9:27 Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
- Job 14:5 Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his bounds that he can’t pass;
- Matthew 15:13 But he answered, “Every plant which my heavenly Father didn’t plant will be uprooted.
- Jeremiah 18:7-10 At the instant I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to break down and to destroy it; if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do to them. At the instant I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if they do that which is evil in my sight, that they not obey my voice, then I will repent of the good with which I said I would benefit them.
- Job 7:1 “Isn’t a man forced to labor on earth? Aren’t his days like the days of a hired hand?
- Isaiah 38:1 In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said to him, “Yahweh says, ‘Set your house in order, for you will die, and not live.’ ”
- Luke 1:20 Behold, you will be silent and not able to speak until the day that these things will happen, because you didn’t believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their proper time.”
- John 16:21 A woman, when she gives birth, has sorrow because her time has come. But when she has delivered the child, she doesn’t remember the anguish any more, for the joy that a human being is born into the world.
- Galatians 4:4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent out his Son, born to a woman, born under the law,
- Jeremiah 45:4 “You shall tell him, Yahweh says: ‘Behold, that which I have built, I will break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up; and this in the whole land.
- Acts 7:17 “But as the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,
- Acts 7:20 At that time Moses was born, and was exceedingly handsome. He was nourished three months in his father’s house.
- Genesis 17:21 But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this set time next year.”
- Genesis 21:1-2 Yahweh visited Sarah as he had said, and Yahweh did to Sarah as he had spoken. Sarah conceived, and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.
- Genesis 47:29 The time came near that Israel must die, and he called his son Joseph, and said to him, “If now I have found favor in your sight, please put your hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me. Please don’t bury me in Egypt,
- Numbers 20:24-28 “Aaron shall be gathered to his people; for he shall not enter into the land which I have given to the children of Israel, because you rebelled against my word at the waters of Meribah. Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up to Mount Hor; and strip Aaron of his garments, and put them on Eleazar his son. Aaron shall be gathered, and shall die there.” Moses did as Yahweh commanded. They went up onto Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation. Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them on Eleazar his son. Aaron died there on the top of the mountain, and Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain.
- Numbers 27:12-14 Yahweh said to Moses, “Go up into this mountain of Abarim, and see the land which I have given to the children of Israel. When you have seen it, you also shall be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother was gathered; because in the strife of the congregation, you rebelled against my word in the wilderness of Zin, to honor me as holy at the waters before their eyes.” (These are the waters of Meribah of Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.)
- Deuteronomy 3:23-26 I begged Yahweh at that time, saying, “Lord Yahweh, you have begun to show your servant your greatness, and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or in earth that can do works like yours, and mighty acts like yours? Please let me go over and see the good land that is beyond the Jordan, that fine mountain, and Lebanon.” But Yahweh was angry with me because of you, and didn’t listen to me. Yahweh said to me, “That is enough! Speak no more to me of this matter.
- Deuteronomy 34:5 So Moses the servant of Yahweh died there in the land of Moab, according to Yahweh’s word.
- 1 Samuel 2:5 Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread. Those who were hungry are satisfied. Yes, the barren has borne seven. She who has many children languishes.
- 1 Kings 13:2 He cried against the altar by Yahweh’s word, and said, “Altar! Altar! Yahweh says: ‘Behold, a son will be born to David’s house, Josiah by name. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and they will burn men’s bones on you.’ ”
- 2 Kings 4:16 He said, “At this season, when the time comes around, you will embrace a son.” She said, “No, my lord, you man of God, do not lie to your servant.”
- Job 14:14 If a man dies, will he live again? I would wait all the days of my warfare, until my release should come.
- Psalms 52:5 God will likewise destroy you forever. He will take you up, and pluck you out of your tent, and root you out of the land of the living.
- Psalms 113:9 He settles the barren woman in her home as a joyful mother of children. Praise Yah!
- Isaiah 5:2-5 He dug it up, gathered out its stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the middle of it, and also cut out a wine press in it. He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. “Now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Why, when I looked for it to yield grapes, did it yield wild grapes? Now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be eaten up. I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down.
- Isaiah 38:5 “Go, and tell Hezekiah, ‘Yahweh, the God of David your father, says, “I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.
- Isaiah 54:1 “Sing, barren, you who didn’t give birth; break out into singing, and cry aloud, you who didn’t travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife,” says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 1:10 Behold, I have today set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
- Matthew 13:28-29 “He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and gather them up?’ “But he said, ‘No, lest perhaps while you gather up the darnel weeds, you root up the wheat with them.
- Matthew 13:41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and those who do iniquity,
- Luke 1:13 But the angel said to him, “Don’t be afraid, Zacharias, because your request has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.
- Luke 1:36 Behold, Elizabeth your relative also has conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.
- John 7:30 They sought therefore to take him; but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (14 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Ecc 3:2 A time to be born, and a…
Ecc 3:2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up [that which is] planted;
Ver. 2. There is a time to be born, and a time to die]. We do not hear the wise man say, There is a time to live. What is more fleeting than time? yet life is not long enough to be worthy the title of time. Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in our grave. Orimur, morimur. we spring forth, we die.
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“ Multos ostendunt terris bona faeta, nec ultra
Esse sinunt … Finisque ab origine pendet. ”
How many have we seen carried from the womb to the tomb; {a} from the birth to the burial! And what a short cut hath the longest liver from the grave of the womb to the womb of the grave! Men chop into the earth before they are aware many times; like as he that walks in a field covered with snow falls suddenly into a clay pit.
A time to plant, &c.] In point of good husbandry fit seasons are to be observed, or else little increase can be expected. God also, the great vinedresser, plants and plucks up more churches or particular persons at his pleasure. {Isa 5:1-8 Mat 15:13} Jerusalem, that plant of renown, is now of an Eden become a Sodom, and that which Moses threatened {Deu 28:49-57} is fulfilled to the utmost. Susa in Persia signifies a lily, and was so called for the beauty and delectable sight; now it is called Valdac, of the poverty of the place. Nineveh, that great city, that once had more people within her walls than are now in some one kingdom, is at this day become a sepulture of itself, a little town of small trade, where the patriarch of the Nestorians keeps his seat at the devotion of the Turks.
“ Roma diu titubans variis erroribus acta
Corruet, et mundi definet esse caput. ”{ b}
{a} Ab utero ab urnam.
{b} Frid. secund. Imper.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain A time to die; a certain period unknown to…
A time to die; a certain period unknown to man, but fixed by God, in which a man must unavoidably die; of which see Job 14:5; Joh 13:1.
A time to plant; wherein God inclines a man’s heart to planting.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain A time to be born,.... The Targum is,
A time to be born,.... The Targum is,
"to beget sons and daughters;''
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but rather it is to bear them, there being a time in nature fixed for that, called the hour of a woman, Job 14:1;
and a time to die; the time of a man's coming into the world and going out of it, both being fixed by the Lord (f): this is true of all men in general, of all men that come into the world, for whom it is appointed that they shall die; and particularly of Christ, whose birth was at the time appointed by the Father, in the fulness of time; and whose death was in due time, nor could his life be taken away before his hour was come, Joh 7:30; and this holds good of every individual man; his birth is at the time God has fixed it; that any man is born into the world, is of God; no man comes into it at his own pleasure or another's, but at the will of God, and when he pleases, not sooner nor later; and the time of his going out of the world is settled by him, beyond which time he cannot live, and sooner he cannot die, Job 14:5; and though no mention is made of the interval of life between a man's birth and death, yet all events intervening are appointed by God; as the place of his abode; his calling and station of life; all circumstances of prosperity and adversity; all diseases of body, and what lead on to death, and issue in it: the reason why these two are put so close together is, to show the certainty of death; that as sure as a man is born, so sure shall he die; and the frailty and shortness of life, which is but an hand's breadth, passes away like a tale that is told, yea, is as nothing; so that no account is made of it, as if there was no time allotted it, or that it deserved no mention; and also to observe that the seeds of mortality and death are in men as soon as they are born; as soon as they begin to live they begin to die, death is working in them;
a time to plant; a tree, as the Targum, or any herb;
and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a tree or herb, as before, when grown to its ripeness, and fit for use; or when grown old, barren, and unfruitful; there are particular seasons for planting plants, and some for one and some for another. This may be applied in a civil sense to planting and plucking up kingdoms and states; see Jer 1:10; as it is by the Jews, particularly to the planting and plucking up of the kingdom of Israel; the people of Israel were a vine brought out of Egypt and planted in the land of Canaan, and afterwards plucked up and carried captive into Babylon; and afterwards planted again, and then again plucked up by the Romans; and will be assuredly planted in their own land again; see Psa 80:8; It may be illustrated in a spiritual sense by the planting of the Jewish church, sometimes compared to a vineyard; and the plucking it up, abolishing their church state and ordinances; and by planting Gospel churches in the Gentile world, and plucking them up again, as in the seven cities of Asia; or removing the candlestick out of its place; and by planting particular persons in churches, and removing them again: some indeed that are planted in the house of the Lord are planted in Christ, and rooted and grounded in the love of God; are plants which Christ's Father has planted, and will never be rooted up; but there are others who are planted through the external ministry of the word, or are plants only by profession, and these become twice dead, plucked up by the roots; and there are times for these things, Psa 92:14.
(f) "Stat sua cuique dies, breve et irreparabile tempus omnibus est vitae"; Virgil. Aeneid. l. 10.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain To die - And as there is a time…
To die - And as there is a time to die, so there is a time to rise again, a set time when they that lie in the grave shall be remembered.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 2. A time to be born, and a…
Verse 2. A time to be born, and a time to die - plant]
"As in its mother's womb the embryo lies
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A space determined; to full growth arrived,
From its dark prison bursts, and sees the light;
So is the period fix'd when man shall drop
Into the grave. - A time there is to plant,
And sow; another time to pluck and reap.
Even nations have their destined rise and fall:
Awhile they thrive; and for destruction ripe,
When grown, are rooted up like wither'd plants."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Ecc 3:2-8. A time to die — And as…
Ecc 3:2-8. A time to die — And as there is a time to die, so there is a time to rise again, a set time, when they that lie in the grave shall be remembered. A time to kill — When men die a violent death. A time to heal — When he who seemed to be mortally wounded is healed. A time to weep — When men have just occasion for weeping, as they frequently have in the present life, both for their own sins and for the sins and miseries of mankind. “It is in vain,” says Castalio, here, “to expect our happiness in this world: for this is no more the time and the place for it, than the seed- time is the harvest. But we must stay till the next life for it; which is the proper time for complete happiness: here we must be content with a great many tears.” A time to cast away stones — Which were brought together in order to the building of a wall, or house, but are now castaway, either because the person who gathered them hath changed his mind, and desists from his project, or for other causes. A time to embrace — When persons enter into friendship, and perform all friendly offices one to another; and a time to refrain, &c. — Either through alienation of affection, or grievous calamities. A time to get, and a time to lose — “In our traffic and commerce one with another, there is a time of gaining much; but there are other times, when a man must be content to lose by his commodities.” A time to keep, &c. — “Sometimes also it is fit for a man to keep and lay up what he hath gotten; but at another time it will be as fit for him to spend or to give it away to those that need.” A time to rend — When men rend their garments, as they did in great and sudden griefs. A time to love — When God stirs up love, or gives occasion for the exercise of it.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain time to die-- (Psa 31:15; Heb 9:27).
time to die-- (Psa 31:15; Heb 9:27).
plant--A man can no more reverse the times and order of "planting," and of "digging up," and transplanting, than he can alter the times fixed for his "birth" and "death." To try to "plant" out of season is vanity, however good in season; so to make earthly things the chief end is vanity, however good they be in order and season. GILL takes it, not so well, figuratively (Jer 18:7, Jer 18:9; Amo 9:15; Mat 15:13).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 2. A time to be born… to die —…
2. A time to be born… to die — The hour of our birth is set independently of us; that of our death is reached with more complication, and our will is an element to some degree in the case; but the uniform teaching of the Old Testament is, that there is an appointed time to man upon earth, and that he accomplishes, as a hireling, his day. So in the vegetable world. A vegetable must be planted, it matures, and must then be gathered.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 2. A time to be born] Literally, a time…
2. A time to be born] Literally, a time to bear. It should be noted that in Hebrew MSS. and printed texts, the list of Times and Seasons appears in two parallel columns, as if forming a kind of rhythmical catalogue, what the Greeks called a συστοιχία, or Table of Contrasts. It seems at first strange that the list should begin with events which are (putting aside the exceptional case of suicide) involuntary. It may be, however, that they were chosen for that very reason as representative instances of the fixed order on which the writer dwells. We shrink from the thought of an untimely birth (ch. Ecc_6:3) or an untimely death; we shudder at the thought of accelerating either, or of hindering the former, and yet the other incidents of life have, not less than these, each of them, their appointed season, if only we could discern it.
a time to plant] Human life in its beginning and its end is seen to have a parallel in that of plants. Here also there is a time for sowing, and after the fruits of the earth have been gathered in (this and not a wanton destruction, which would be a violation of the natural order, is clearly meant) to pluck up that the planting may again come. It is, perhaps, over fanciful to make the words include the “planting” and “uprooting” of nations and kingdoms as in Jer_1:10. It is significant, however, that the word for “pluck up” is an unusual word, and, where it occurs elsewhere, in the O. T. is used figuratively of the destruction of cities as in Zep_2:4.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (2) The list of times and seasons is ranged…
(2) The list of times and seasons is ranged in Hebrew MSS. and printed books in two parallel columns.
A time to die.—Job_14:5.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain A time to be born, and a time to…
A time to be born, and a time to die. Throughout the succeeding catalogue marked contrasts are exhibited in pairs, beginning with the entrance and close of life, the rest of the list being occupied with events and circumstances which intervene between those two extremities. The words rendered, "a time to be born," might more naturally mean a time to bear;" kairov tou tekein, Septuagint; as the verb is in the infinitive active, which, in this particular verb, is not elsewhere found used in the passive sense, though other verbs are so used sometimes, as in Jer_25:34. In the first case the catalogue commences with the beginning of life; in the second, with the season of full maturity: "Those who at one time give life to others, at another have themselves to yield to the law of death" (Wright) The contrast points to the passive rendering. There is no question of untimely birth or suicide; in the common order of events birth and death have each their appointed season, which comes to pass without man"s interference, being directed by a higher law. "It is appointed unto men once to die". (Heb_9:27) Koheleth"s teaching was perverted by sensualists, as we read in RAPC Wis 2:2, 3, 5. A time to plant. After speaking of human life it is natural to turn to vegetable life, which runs in parallel lines with man"s existence. Thus Job, having intimated the shortness of life and the certainty of death, proceeds to speak of the tree, contrasting its revivifying powers with the hopelessness of man"s decay. (Job_14:5, etc.) And to pluck up that which is planted. This last operation may refer to the transplanting of trees and shrubs, or to the gathering of the fruits of the earth in order to make room for new agricultural works. But having regard to the opposition in all the members of the series, we should rather consider the "plucking up" as equivalent to destroying, if we plant trees, a time comes when we cut them down, and this is their final cause. Some commentators see in this clause an allusion to the settling and uprooting of kingdoms and nations, as Jer_1:10 Jer_18:9. etc. but this could not have been the idea in Koheleth"s mind.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain A time to be born, and a time to…
Ecc_3:2
A time to be born, and a time to die.
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How to make the most of life
(with Ecc_7:17):--The verse has two parts: There is a time to be born; and a time to die: and it seems as if man had as little control over the one as over the other--over the day of his death as over the day of his birth. These are the two milestones between which is included the whole of mans life on earth. Here is no place for free-will. All is blind, remorseless destiny. And yet the correlative text, Why shouldest thou die before thy time? seems to imply that life and death are in a mans own power. And in a plain sense this also is true, so that the two are only the opposite poles of one great truth, which in its completeness embraces a whole philosophy of life. That philosophy is summed up in this: That life is a gift of God--a sacred gift--to be wisely used and soberly enjoyed, and not to be trifled with, nor thrown away. But life on earth is not immortal: There is a time to die. Nor is this a harsh decree. If only the end for which life was given be attained, man may surrender it, at the last, not only without regret, but in perfect peace. The only thing he has to fear is that he be called out of life before his time, with all his plans unfulfilled, his hopes disappointed, and his great destiny unattained. The latter half of our text, Why shouldest thou die before thy time? teaches us this practical lesson: That we are to make the most of life by a prudent economy of it--not a petty economy of money (which is often but the smallest element in the total of influences which make up the being that we are), but an economy of life itself, of all the vital forces, of health and reason and the elements of happiness. All this is embraced in the one great word, Life. This is the prize which the Creator offers to every being to whom He gives a living body and a reasonable soul. Why shouldest thou die before thy time? In one sense no man can die before his time, for is not the day of death fixed? Hath not God appointed His bound that he cannot pass? Yet, in another sense, it is quite possible to cut short the term of life That is the evident meaning here. By a mans time is meant the natural limit to which one of his vitality and strength, living a sober, temperate life, might attain. Anything short of that may be ascribed to his own folly or guilt. Thus, all will admit that a man dies before his time who takes his own life, which he has no more right to take than that of his neighbour. Even though the existence that is left to him have to be endured rather than enjoyed a man must stand like a sentinel at his post, keeping watch through the long night hours, and waiting for the breaking of the day. But the wretched suicide is not the only man who is guilty of taking his own life. There are other ways of ending ones existence than by violence. The drunkard. The number of those who thus untimely perish is beyond all counting. Vice has slain its thousands, and drunkenness its ten thousands. And now turn and look at another picture. If it be a shame so to die, on the other hand what a glorious thing it is to live--to enjoy a rational, intelligent, and moral existence! Even as a matter of selfish calculation, the purely intellectual enjoyment of a man of science far transcends the vulgar delights of a life of pleasure. What a life must have been that of Kepler or Galileo! Who would throw away an existence that contains such possibilities of knowledge? Make it, then, your resolve to live a life of the strictest temperance and purity and virtue, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God giveth you. But this is only half the truth of my text. Why shouldest thou die before thy time? But at the last there is a time to die. O God, I thank Thee for that word! There is a time to die! And religion, while it condemns the reckless throwing away of life, equally condemns the cowardly clinging to life when duty requires it to be sacrificed. Dear as life is, there are things which are a thousand times dearer--truth, honour, justice, and liberty, ones country and religion; and it may become a duty to sacrifice the lesser interest to the greater. It does not follow that a man dies before his time because he dies young. That life is long which answers lifes great end; and though one may finish his course on the very threshold of manhood, that end may be gloriously fulfilled. (H. M. Field, D. D.)
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
The periodicities of the religious world
The seasons succeed each other, and each has its own use and purpose. The spring with its fresh loveliness comes first on the stage, and then, after a due interval, follows autumn with its sad decay. The sower takes possession of the field in the bright days of April, and he is the most appropriate figure in the landscape, while he is scattering the seeds of promise over the bare, brown furrows. He departs, and his place is taken by the reapers, who form a pleasant company on the golden harvest field, and gather in the sheaves under the bright smile of the blue September day. The time of planting is associated with all that is fresh and animated and hopeful. But the time of plucking up that which was planted is associated with failure and disappointment, with vanity and death. And Nature makes her work of decay particularly unsightly, in order to force its moral lesson more emphatically upon our notice. We cannot help feeling how disconsolate the apple-tree looks after its rosy-white petals have fallen and when the small green fruit is setting, how dim the much fine gold of the laburnum tresses become in fading, and how the hawthorn blossoms in their withering leave a dirty-brown stain upon the country hedges like the parched bed of a belated snow-wreath that has melted away beneath the summer sun. While we are thus impressively reminded of the periodicity of Nature, the ebb and flow of her seasons and productions, we can apply the lesson to our human affairs. There are periods in human history that are analogous to the season of spring when we sow and plant with a bright enthusiasm and a large hopefulness. Our minds are ardent and vigorous. Everything is fresh and full of interest. It seems as if we had only newly awakened to the beauty and glory of the world. Looking but upon the past we can recall ages of creative genius when man conceived and executed great things in art and literature, when every work had on it the hallmark of original inspiration. Such an age was that of Pericles in Greece, and of Queen Elizabeth in England. Such periods were times of planting, and they had all the glory and freshness of spring. But they were followed by ages in which a woeful reaction of weariness and decay took place. Rules and precedents were followed instead of the fresh insight, freedom and spontaneity of nature; criticism assumed the function of inspiration; and everywhere might be seen the slavish conventionality of exhausted capacity. They were ages in which whatever intellectual energies men had left to them were expended in plucking up that which nobler ages had planted. The commencement of the Victorian epoch was a period of remarkable creative power, a springtime of exuberant mental fertility. But the close of it seems to be characterized by a kind of listless decay. Like the fruit-tree that has one season been too productive, and must rest till it recover and accumulate fresh stores of vitality, so this age seems to be suffering from the reaction of over-production. The largest proportion of our literature is given up to criticism or imitation. It is a time to pluck up that which was planted. And the same periodicity that distinguishes the intellectual also characterizes the religious world. It has its ages of faith and its ages of doubt; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which was planted. We seem to have reached at the present day a period of listlessness and analytical indifference in regard to religious things. On every side we see, instead of a noble enthusiasm in the highest of all studies, a carping finical criticism on the most sacred subjects. However much we may deplore this state of things, we cannot say that it is absolutely evil. It has, indeed, a good purpose to serve. Winter periods are necessary in the spiritual world as testing times, to find out what is merely superficial and transient, and what is substantial and has in it the elements of endurance. It is a winter desolation to make ready for a spring of revival; and many of its evils are caused by the quickening of new life. The best thing, therefore, to do during the disquietude of a time of plucking up in the religious world is to dwell much in thought upon the ages of faith when men lived heroic lives and died blessed deaths in the heartfelt belief of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The criticism and analysis of the present time can best be counteracted by the synthesis and construction of a nobler time when men created instead of destroyed, built up instead of east down, planted instead of plucked up the springtime of divine grace. And this synthesis is practically always possible to the meek in spirit to whom God will teach His way. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Ecclesiastes
‘A TIME TO PLANT’
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Ecc 3:2.
The writer enumerates in this context a number of opposite courses of conduct arranged in pairs, each of which is right at the right time. The view thus presented seems to him to be depressing, and to make life difficult to understand, and aimless. We always appear to be building up with one hand and pulling down with the other. The ship never heads for two miles together in the same direction. The history of human affairs appears to be as purposeless as the play of the wind on the desert sands, which it sometimes piles into huge mounds and then scatters.
So he concludes that only God, who appoints the seasons that demand opposite courses of conduct, can understand what it all means. The engine-driver knows why he reverses his engine, and not the wheels that are running in opposite directions in consecutive moments according to his will.
Now that is a one-sided view, of course, for it is to be remembered that the Book of Ecclesiastes is the logbook of a voyager after truth, and tells us all the wanderings and errors of his thinking until he has arrived at the haven of the conclusion that he announces in the final word: ‘Hear the sum of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.’
I have nothing to do just now with the conclusion which he arrives at, but the facts from which he starts are significant and important. There are things in life, God has so arranged it, which can only be done fittingly, and for the most part of all, at certain seasons; and the secret of success is the discernment of present duty, and the prompt performance of it.
And this is especially true about your time of life, my young friends. There are things, very important things, which, unless you do them now, the overwhelming probability is that you will never do at all; and the certainty is that you will not do them half as well. And so I want to ask you to look at these words, which, by a legitimate extension of the writer’s meaning, and taking them in a kind of parabolic way, may sum up for us the whole of the special duties of youth. ‘A time to plant.’
I. Now, my first remark is this: that you are now in the planting time of your lives.
No wise forester will try to shift shrubs or to put them into his gardens or woods, except in late autumn or early spring. And our lives are as really under the dominion of the law of seasons as the green world of the forest and the fields. Speaking generally, and admitting the existence of many exceptions, the years between childhood and, say, two or three-and-twenty, for a young man or woman, for the most part settle the main outline of their character, and thereby determine their history, which, after all, is mainly the outcome of their character.
You have wide possibilities before you, of moulding your characters into beauty, and purity, holiness, and strength.
For one thing, you have got no past, or next to none written all over, which it is hard to erase. You have substantially a clean sheet on which to write what you like. Your stage of life predisposes you in favour of novelty. New things are glad things to you, whereas to us older people a new thought coming into some of our brains is like a new bit of furniture coming into a crowded room. All the other pieces need to be arranged, and it is more of a trouble than anything else. You are flexible and plastic as yet, like the iron running out of the blast furnace in a molten stream, which in half an hour’s time will be a rigid bar that no man can bend.
You have all these things in your favour, and so, dear young friends, whether you think of it or not, whether voluntarily or not, I want you to remember that this awful process is going on inevitably and constantly in every one of you. You are planting, whether you recognise the fact or no. What are you planting?
Well, for one thing, you are making habits, which are but actions hardened, like the juice that exudes from the pine-tree, liquid, or all but liquid, when it comes out, and when exposed to the air, is solidified and tenacious. The old legend of the man in the tower who got a slim thread up to his window, to which was attached one thicker and then thicker, and so on ever increasing until he hauled in a cable, is a true parable of what goes on in every human life. Some one deed, a thin film like a spider’s thread, draws after it a thicker, by that inevitable law that a thing done once tends to be done twice, and that the second time it is easier than the first time. A man makes a track with great difficulty across the snow in a morning, but every time that he travels it, it is a little harder, and the track is a little broader, and it is easier walking. You play with the tiger’s whelp of some pleasant, questionable enjoyment, and you think that it will always keep so innocent, with its budding claws not able to draw blood, but it grows-it grows. And it grows according to its kind, and what was a plaything one day is a full-grown and ravening wild beast in a while. You are making habits, whatever else you are making, and you are planting in your hearts seeds that will spring and bear fruit according to their kind.
Then remember, you are planting belief.-Most of us, I am afraid, get our opinions by haphazard; like the child in the well-known story, whose only account of herself was that ‘she expected she growed.’ That is the way by which most of you come to what you dignify by the name of your opinions. They come in upon you, you do not know how. Youth is receptive of anything new. You can learn a vast deal more easily than many of us older people can. Set down a man who has never learned the alphabet, to learn his letters, and see what a task it is for him. Or if he takes a pen in his hand for the first time, look how difficult the stiff wrist and thick knuckles find it to bend. Yours is the time for forming your opinions, for forming some rational and intelligent account of yourself and the world about you. See to it, that you plant truth in your hearts, under which you may live sheltered for many days.
Then again, you are planting character, which is not only habit, but something more. You are making yourselves, whatever else you are making. You begin with almost boundless possibilities, and these narrow and narrow and narrow, according to your actions, until you have laid the rails on which you travel-one narrow line that you cannot get off. A man’s character is, if I may use a chemical term, a ‘precipitate’ from his actions. Why, it takes acres of roses to make a flask of perfume; and all the long life of a man is represented in his ultimate character. Character is formed like those chalk cliffs in the south, built up eight hundred feet, beetling above the stormy sea; and all made up of the relics of microscopic animals. So you build up a great solid structure-yourself-out of all your deeds. You are making your character, your habits, your opinions.-And you are making your reputation too. And you will not be able to get rid of that. This is the time for you to make a good record or a bad one, in other people’s opinions.
And so, young men and women, boys and girls, I want you to remember the permanent effects of your most fleeting acts. Nothing ever dies that a man does. Nothing! You go into a museum, and you will see standing there a slab of red sandstone, and little dints and dimples upon it. What are they? Marks made by a flying shower that lasted for five minutes, nobody knows how many millenniums ago. And there they are, and there they will be until the world is burned up. So our fleeting deeds are all recorded here, in our permanent character. Everything that we have done is laid up there in the testimony of the rocks:-
‘Through our soul the echoes roll,
And grow for ever and for ever.’
You are now living in ‘a time to plant.’
II. Notice, in the next place, that as surely as now is the time to plant, then will be a time to reap.
I do not know whether the writer of my text meant the harvest, when he put in antithesis to my text the other clause, ‘and a time to pluck up that which is planted.’ Probably, as most of the other pairs are opposites, here, too, we are to see an opposite rather than a result; the destructive action of plucking up, and not the preservative action of gathering a harvest. But, however that may be, let me remind you that there stands, irrefragable, for every human soul and every human deed, this great solemn law of retribution.
Now what lies in that law? Two things-that the results are similar in kind, and more in number. The law of likeness, and the law of increase, both of them belong to the working of the law of retribution. And so, be sure that you will find out that all your past lives on into your present; and that the present, in fact, is very little more than the outcome of the past. What you plant as a youth you will reap as a man. This mysterious life of ours is all sowing and reaping intermingled, right away on to the very end. Each action is in turn the child of all the preceding and the parent of all that follows. But still, though that be true, your time of life is predominantly the time of sowing; and my time of life, for instance, is predominantly the time of reaping. There are a great many things that I could not do now if I wished. There are a great many things in our past that I, and men of my age, would fain alter; but there they stand, and nothing can do away the marks of that which once has been. We have to reap, and so will you some day.
And I will tell you what you will have to reap, as sure as you are sitting in those pews. You will have the enlarged growth of your present characteristics. A man takes a photograph upon a sensitive plate, half the size of the palm of my hand; and then he enlarges it to any size he pleases. And that is what life does for all of us. The pictures, drawn small on the young man’s imagination, on the young woman’s dreaming heart, be they of angels or of beasts, are permanent; and they will get bigger and bigger and bigger, as get older. You do not reap only as much as you sowed, but ‘some sixty fold, and some an hundred fold.’
And you will reap the increased dominion of your early habits. There is a grim verse in the Book of Proverbs that speaks about a man being tied and bound by the chains of his sins. And that is just saying that the things which you chose to do when you were a boy, many of them you will have to do when you are a man; because you have lost the power, though sometimes not the will, of doing anything else. There be men that sow the wind, and they do not reap the wind, but the law of increase comes in and they reap the whirlwind. There be men who, according to the old Greek legend, sow dragon’s teeth and they reap armed soldiers. There are some of you that are sowing to the flesh, and as sure as God lives, you will ‘of the flesh reap corruption.’ ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that,’ even here, ‘shall he also reap.’
And let me remind you that that law of inheriting the fruit of our doings is by no means exhausted by the experience of life. Whenever conscience is awakened it at once testifies not only of a broken law, but of a living Law-giver; and not only of retribution here, but of retribution hereafter. And I for my part believe that the modern form of Christianity and the tendencies of the modern pulpit, influenced by some theological discussions, about details in the notion of retribution that have been going on of late years, have operated to make ministers of the Gospel too chary of preaching, and hearers indisposed to accept, the message of ‘the terror of the Lord.’ My dear friends! retribution cannot stop on this side of the grave, and if you are going yonder you are carrying with you the necessity in yourself for inheriting the results of your life here. I beseech you, do not put away such thoughts as this, with the notion that I am brandishing before you some antiquated doctrine, fit only to frighten old women and children. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes was no weak-minded, superstitious fanatic. He was far more disposed to scepticism than to fanaticism. But for all that, with all his sympathy for young men’s breadth and liberality, with his tolerance for all sorts and ways of living, with all his doubts and questionings, he came to this, and this was his teaching to the young men whom in idea he had gathered round his chair,-’Rejoice, oh young man, in thy youth. And let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes.’ By all means, God has put you into a fair world, and meant you to get all the good out of it. ‘But,’ and that not as a kill-joy, ‘know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment,’ and shape your characters accordingly.
III. Still further, let me say, these things being so, you especially need to ponder them.
That is so, because you especially are in danger of forgetting them. It is meant that young people should live by impulse much more than by reflection.
‘If nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is there that could live an hour?’
The days of calculation will come soon enough; and I do not want to hurry them. I do not want to put old heads upon young shoulders. I would rather see the young ones, a great deal. But I want you not to go down to the level of the beast, living only by instinct and by impulse. You have got brains, you are meant to use them. You have the great divine gift of reason, that looks before and after, and though you have not much experience yet, you can, if you will, reflect upon such things as I have just been saying to you, and take them into your hearts, and live accordingly. My dear young friend! enjoy yourself, live buoyantly, yield to your impulses, be glad for the beautiful life that is unfolding around you, and the strong nature that is blossoming within you. And then take this other lesson, ‘Ponder the path of thy feet,’ and remember that all the while you dance along the flowery path, you are planting what you will have to reap.
Then, still further, it is especially needful for you that you should ponder these things, because unless you do you will certainly go wrong. If you do not plant good, somebody else will plant evil. An untilled field is not a field that nothing grows in, but it is a field full of weeds; and the world and the flesh and the devil, the temptations round about you and the evil tendencies in you, unless they are well kept down and kept off, are sure to fill your souls full of all manner of seeds that will spring up to bitterness, and poison, and death. Oh! think, think! for it is the only chance of keeping your hearts from being full of wickedness-think what you are sowing, and think what will the harvest be. There are some of you, as I said, sowing to the flesh, young men living impure and wicked lives, and ‘their bones are full of the sins of their youth.’ There are some of you letting every wind bring the thistledown of vanities, and scatter them all across your hearts, that they may spring up prickly, and gifted with a fatal power of self-multiplication. There are some of you, young men, and young women too, whose lives are divided between Manchester business and that ignoble thirst for mere amusement which is eating all the dignity and the earnestness out of the young men of this city. I beseech you, do not slide into habits of frivolity, licentiousness, and sin, for want of looking after yourselves. Remember, if you do not ponder the path of your feet, you are sure to take the turn to the left.
Again, it is needful for you to ponder these things, for if you waste this time, it will never come back to you any more. It is useless to sow corn in August. There are things in this world that a man can only get when he is young, such as sound education, for instance; business habits, habits of industry, of application, of concentration, of self-control, a reputation which may avail in the future. If you do not begin to get these before you are five-and-twenty, you will never get them.
And although the certainty is not so absolute in regard to spiritual and religious things, the dice are frightfully weighted, and the chances are terribly small that a young man who, like some of you, has passed his early years in church or chapel, in weekly contact with earnest preaching, and has not accepted the Saviour, will do it when he grows old. He may; he may. But it is a great deal more likely that he will not.
IV. The conclusion of the whole matter is, Begin on the spot, to trust and to serve Jesus Christ.
These are the best things to plant-simple reliance upon His death for your forgiveness, upon His power to make you pure and clean; simple submission to His commandment. Oh! dear young friend; if you have these in your hearts everything will come right. You will get habit on your side, and that is much; and you will be saved from a great deal of misery which would be yours if you went wrong first, and then came right.
If you will plant a cutting of the tree of life in your heart it will yield everything to you when it grows. The people in the South Seas, if they have a palm-tree, can get out of it bread and drink, food, clothing, shelter, light, materials for books, cordage for their boats, needles to sew with, and everything. If you will take Jesus Christ, and plant Him in your hearts, everything will come out of that. That Tree ‘bears twelve manners of fruits, and yields His fruit every month.’ With Christ in your heart all other fair things will be planted there; and with Him in your heart, all evil things which you may already have planted there, will be rooted out. Just as when some strong exotic is carried to some distant land and there takes root, it exterminates the feebler vegetation of the place to which it comes; so with Christ in my heart the sins, the evil habits, the passions, the lusts, and all other foul spawn and offspring, will die and disappear. Take Him, then, dear friend! by simple faith, for your Saviour. He will plant the good seed in your spirit, and ‘instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle.’ Your lives will become fruitful of goodness and of joy, according to that ancient promise: ‘The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 3:2-8 We have no control over when we are…
3:2-8 We have no control over when we are born or when we die (8:8), but it is our responsibility to live wisely between those events. • plant and . . . harvest: Wise agricultural decisions must be made in the natural seasons. • In ancient Israel, the times to kill included capital punishment and war. • In times of mourning, people in the Near East would often tear their clothes. • There is a time to hate, even for God (Pss 5:5; 11:5).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.