Ecclesiastes 3:11

Verse 11 follows the famous poem of Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, with its time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time of war and a time of peace. The Preacher has just asked what profit a worker has from his labour, and he has looked at the burdensome task God has given to people (Ecclesiastes 3:9–10). His answer turns from human effort to God, who orders every one of those seasons wisely, including the ones that look confused or heavy from where we stand.

The Preacher, Koheleth in Hebrew, is a sage who writes out of long experience and great privilege, and he has long been identified with King Solomon, whose wisdom is described in 1 Kings 4:29–34. Believers differ on when the book was written. Some hold that Solomon wrote it, and others place it later, in the Persian or Greek period, around the fourth or third century before Christ. Its repeated phrase “under the sun” means life as it is seen from the earth, from a limited human point of view, which so often ends in the verdict “vanity”. Verse 11 looks above that view to the hand of God at work, even though most of what he is doing stays hidden from us.

“He” is God, and the word for beautiful, yâpheh, is the ordinary word for what is fair and pleasing to the eye. Here the beauty belongs to each thing “in his time”, in the season God appoints for it. Every birth and death, every planting and uprooting in the poem before has its place in his order, and the whole is the work of a God whose thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9).

“Also he hath set the world in their heart.” The KJV’s “world” translates ʻôwlâm, a word that most often means a long duration, antiquity, the hidden future or eternity, and eternity is its sense here. God has put into people an awareness of the eternal, a longing for meaning and permanence that reaches past the passing things of life under the sun. The same word returns in verse 14, where whatever God does “shall be for ever”.

This is why people everywhere search for purpose, truth and significance, and why earthly achievements and pleasures leave that search unfinished. The longing belongs to our creation in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), which gives us a capacity to know him and to reach for the infinite. It also fits the groaning of the whole creation as it waits for redemption (Romans 8:22). The eternity in our hearts is satisfied only in the eternal God himself, and it points us to him.

The same verse sets a limit beside the longing. The verb mâtsâ means to find or attain, so “no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end” means that no one can grasp the whole of what God is doing, from its first beginning to its final end. We are made with eternity in our hearts, and we still cannot take in the full span of his work. The limit comes from our being finite before an infinite God, and it keeps us humble and dependent on him. Paul cries out at the depth of the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge (Romans 11:33), and he says that for now we know in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). So we walk by faith in what we cannot yet see whole.

Verse 12 opens with “I know”. The verb yâdaʻ means to know, properly to find out by seeing, and here it is the Preacher’s settled conclusion after watching life closely and thinking it through. “There is no good in them” looks back at the activities and experiences he has listed. Lasting good lies outside the events themselves and outside every effort to control them.

The word for good, ṭôwb, is a very broad one. It covers what is pleasant, beneficial, excellent and morally right, and it appears twice in this verse, first for the good the Preacher looked for in life’s events and then for the good a person does. In Ecclesiastes it means real and lasting value, set against the hebel, the vanity or vapour, of so much human striving (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

The good he names has two parts. The first is to rejoice. The verb sâmach means to rejoice or be glad, to feel and show great joy. The same verb can describe gloating and forbidden joy, so the joy this verse commends is good because of where it comes from, and verse 13 names its source as the gift of God. It is the gladness of someone who takes the simple things of daily life with thanks and contentment. Moses warned Israel of the hardship that would follow if they served the LORD without joy and gladness in the good things he gave (Deuteronomy 28:47–48), and Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord alway” (Philippians 4:4).

The second is “to do good in his life”, in Hebrew ‘asot tov. This is intentional, morally upright action, a life that pleases God and does good to others, kept up through all of one’s days. Joy received and good done belong together. In this way the verse gives human effort its direction, toward what lasts and what God himself makes satisfying, and away from the endless chase after passing gains.

Verse 13 adds to the good of verse 12. “Every man” uses ʼâdâm, the word for a human being or for mankind, so this gift is for all people, whatever their standing or circumstances. Eating and drinking are the most basic needs of life and its most common physical pleasures, and the verse sets them alongside enjoying “the good of all his labour”.

The word for labour, ʻâmâl, often carries the sense of toil, weariness, pain and even sorrow, the hard work of the ground after the fall (Genesis 3:17–19). Israel lived by farming, under weather no one could control, and to eat the fruit of one’s own work was a sign of blessing, because many knew lack, oppression or work that came to nothing. Work itself has dignity from the beginning, when God put the man in the garden to tend it (Genesis 2:15). “The good” of that labour is ṭôwb again, the same word God speaks over his creation in Genesis, and here it means the satisfaction and well-being that come from work and its fruits.

“It is the gift of God.” The noun mattâth means a present, something freely given and unearned. The ability to enjoy food, drink and work comes from God’s generosity, and every meal and every day’s work can be received from his hand. The Preacher returns to this again and again (Ecclesiastes 2:24–25, 5:18–20, 9:7–9). Moses told Israel that it is the LORD who gives them power to get wealth, lest they credit their own strength (Deuteronomy 8:17–18). Paul says that God gives us richly all things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17), and James that every good gift comes down from the Father above (James 1:17).

Verse 14 opens with the same verb as verse 12, yâdaʻ, “I know”, and it is again a settled conviction. “Whatsoever God doeth” takes in all his works, his decrees, his providence, and the order he has set in creation and history. All of it “shall be for ever”, ʻôwlâm, the word of verse 11. It lasts through every generation, while so much human effort is called vanity.

“Nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it.” God’s work is complete and perfect. Human wisdom or power can add nothing to it, and human interference can take nothing away from it or thwart its purpose. The Preacher says elsewhere that we should consider the work of God, since what he has done we are unable to undo (Ecclesiastes 7:13). This is a great comfort amid the change and uncertainty of life, because the God who does these works says, “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6). James calls him the Father of lights, in whom there is no change (James 1:17).

“And God doeth it, that men should fear before him.” This is the purpose of all his unchanging work. The verb yârêʼ means to fear, and in its moral sense to revere. Here it is the reverence, awe and humble submission of a creature before the God whose works stand for ever, and it leads to worship, trust and obedience. Wisdom literature calls this fear the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7) and the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). It frees us from the anxious attempt to control what only God governs.

Verse 15 echoes the Preacher’s first chapter, “there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The word kᵉbâr speaks of an extent of time, “long ago, formerly, hitherto”, and the KJV renders it “now” in the first clause and “already” in the second. What happens now has happened before, and what is coming has already been. Human nature and its troubles repeat across the generations, so we learn from the past, from those who went before us, and above all from the unchanging truth of God’s word. “That which is to be hath already been” can also speak of conditions that recur, of consequences that follow, and of what God has already ordained for history.

The last clause names God, ʼĕlôhîym, the usual word for the one true God. It is plural in form and is read as a plural of majesty, and its verbs are usually singular. With his name the verse moves from watching the patterns of time to the God who stands over them. Ecclesiastes 1:9 describes repetition as it looks under the sun, and this verse shows God’s own hand behind it.

“God requireth that which is past.” The verb bâqash means to search out, seek or require. God remembers perfectly, so nothing that has happened escapes him. He calls every deed, good or evil, to account in his time, for “every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12). And he carries out his purpose through the ages, so that past events serve his will and his promises are kept. He is the God of Psalm 90:1–2: “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”

This gives both accountability and hope. Every deed, every tear, every act of faithfulness and every injustice is known to him. Where human justice fails, his justice will prevail, and even past failures and regrets can be redeemed within his plan.

God’s beautiful work in its time is seen most clearly in Jesus. “When the fulness of the time was come”, God sent his Son (Galatians 4:4), and history was ordered for the coming of the Lamb of God (John 1:29). The eternity set in our hearts finds its answer in the one who is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) and who gives everlasting life to all who believe in him (John 3:16). The Preacher confessed that no one can find out the work of God from beginning to end, and in Christ, the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), God has made known the mystery of his will, to gather together all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:9–10). The full depths of his work remain beyond us, and in Jesus we are given its key.

Jesus “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38), and he gives his people a joy that remains in them (John 15:11) and that no one can take away (John 16:22). God’s greatest gift is his Son (John 3:16). He is the bread of life (John 6:35) and the giver of living water (John 4:10), and the food, drink and work of verse 13 point to the deeper satisfaction found in him. In him our daily work becomes something done in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17), and as we seek first God’s kingdom, the things we need are added to us (Matthew 6:33).

The finished work to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken is seen above all at the cross, where Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). By one offering he has perfected for ever them that are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14), and he is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). The fear owed to God is owed to him, at whose name every knee shall bow (Philippians 2:10), the Lamb who is worthy of all praise (Revelation 5:12).

The God who requires what is past sent his Son so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:3–4), and the past that stood against us was judged at the cross. In Christ, “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and by him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17).

This passage shows us a God who orders every season, who made us for eternity, and whose work stands for ever. It gives us honest limits, since we cannot trace the whole of what he does, and it asks us to trust him with what we cannot see. It also gives us ordinary joys as his gifts: bread and drink, work that bears fruit, gladness, and the chance to do good while we live. These come from the same hand that holds the past and the future, so in this passage the fear of God and the enjoyment of his gifts sit side by side. The God who seeks out what is past forgets no deed and no act of faithfulness, and his justice will have the last word. And in Christ, who came in the fulness of the time, the eternity in our hearts has found the one it was made for.