Ecclesiastes 3:11

He hath made every [thing] beautiful in his time,.... That is, God has made everything; as all things in creation are made by him, for his pleasure and glory, and all well and wisely, there is a

He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: this seems to be added as an apology for God’ s providence, notwithstanding all the contrary events and confusions which are in the world. He (i.e. God, expressed in the last clause of the verse) hath made (or doth make or do, by his providence in the government of the world) every thing (which he doth either immediately, or by the ministry of men or other creatures, for God worketh in and with all his creatures in all their actions, as is agreed by divines and philosophers) beautiful (decently and conveniently, so that, all things considered, it could not have been done better) in his time; in the time which he had appointed, or which he saw most proper and fit for it; or, in its time or season, when it was most fit to be done. Many events seem to men’ s shallow and perverse judgments, at least for a time, to be very irregular and unbecoming, as when wicked men prosper in their impious and unrighteous enterprises, and good men are sorely oppressed and afflicted, and that for righteousness’ sake; but when men shall come thoroughly to understand God’ s works, and the whole frame and contexture of them, and to see the end of them, they will then say that all things were done most wisely and most seasonably; whereof we have eminent instances in Joseph, and David, and Mordecai, and the Jews of his time. He hath set the world in their heart, i.e. in the hearts of men, as the following words show, where man is expressed. The sense is either, 1. Although all God’ s works are beautiful, yet men do not discern the beauty of them, because the world is in their hearts; their minds are so busied and distracted with the thoughts, and cares, and love, and business of this world, that they have neither leisure nor heart seriously to study God’ s works. But this inordinate love of the present world comes from man’ s own corruption, and not from God; and therefore it seems harsh to impute it to God, and improbable that Solomon would have phrased it thus, that God hath set or put the world i.e. worldly lusts, in men’ s hearts. Or, 2. As God’ s works are beautiful in themselves, so men are capable of discerning the beauty of them, because God hath set the world in men’ s hearts; he hath exposed the world, and all his dispensations in the world, unto the view of men’ s minds; both because he hath wrought his works so evidently and publicly, that men might easily observe them; and because he hath given men reason whereby they may discover the wisdom and beauty of all God’ s works, if they diligently apply themselves to the study of them.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He hath made every [thing] beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Ver. 11. He hath made everything beautiful, &c.] Plato was wont to say that God did always γεωμετρειν - work by geometry. Another sage said, Pondere, mensura, numero, Deus omnia fecit, God hath done all in number, weight, and measure; made and set all things in comely and curious order and equipage; he hath also prefined beforehand a convenient and beautiful season for everything; ordering the disorders of the world to his own glory and his Church’ s good. Also he hath set the world in their heart,] i.e., He hath given to men the creature to contemplate, together with an earnest desire to search into nature’ s secrets. The Vulgate renders this text thus: Et mundum tradidit disputationi eorum, And he hath delivered the world to their disputations. But so foolishly and impiously have men disputed of God, of his providence, of his judgments, of the chief happiness, &c., that they have reasoned, or rather wrangled away the truth, being able to find out neither the beginning nor end of the causes or uses of God’ s works. Veritatem philosophia quaerit, theologia invenit, religio possidet, said Picus Mirandula; Philosophy inquires after truth, divinity finds it out, and religion only improves it. Kοσμος, ab ornatu; Mundus, a mundicie. εμωρανθησαν.

(11) In his time.—In modern English, “its.” The world.—The word here translated “world” has that meaning in post-Biblical Hebrew, but never elsewhere in the Old Testament, where it occurs over 300 times. And if we adopt the rendering “world,” it is difficult to explain the verse so as to connect it with the context. Where the word occurs elsewhere it means “eternity,” or “long duration,” and is so used in this book (Ecclesiastes 1:4; Ecclesiastes 1:10; Ecclesiastes 2:16; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Ecclesiastes 9:6; Ecclesiastes 12:5). Taking this meaning of the word here (the only place where the word is used with the article), we may regard it as contrasted with that for “time,” or season, immediately before. Life exhibits a changing succession of weeping alternating with laughing, war with peace, and so forth. For each of these God has appointed its time or season, and in its season each is good. But man does not recognise this; for God has put in his heart an expectation and longing for abiding continuance of the same, and so he fails to understand the work which God does in the world. So that no.—The connecting phrase here employed is rendered “because none” (Deuteronomy 9:28; 2 Kings 6:3, &c), “so that none” (Jeremiah 9:10; Zephaniah 3:6, &c). End.—Ecclesiastes 7:2; Ecclesiastes 12:13; Joe 2:20; 2 Chronicles 20:16. A word belonging to the later Hebrew.

Verse 11. Beautiful in his time] God's works are well done; there are order, harmony, and beauty in them all. Even the caterpillar is a finished beauty in all the changes through which it passes, when its structure is properly examined, and the end kept in view in which each change is to issue. Nothing of this kind can be said of the works of man. The most finished works of art are bungling jobs, when compared with the meanest operation of nature. He hath set the world in their heart] העולם haolam, that hidden time - the period beyond the present, - ETERNITY. The proper translation of this clause is the following: "Also that eternity hath he placed in their heart, without which man could not find out the work which God hath made from the commencement to the end." God has deeply rooted the idea of eternity in every human heart; and every considerate man sees, that all the operations of God refer to that endless duration. See Ecclesiastes 3:14. And it is only in eternity that man will be able to discover what God has designed by the various works he has formed.

11. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time] Better, as removing the ambiguity of the possessive pronoun in modern English ears, “in its time.” The thinker rests for a time in the primeval faith of Israel that all things were created “very good” (Genesis 1:31), in the Stoic thought of a divine system, a Cosmos of order and of beauty, of a plan, even in the development of human history, in which all things work together for good. So even in Lucretius, “Certa suo quia tempore semina rerumCum confluxerunt, patefit quodcumque creator.”“So when the germs of things in season dueHave met together, all creation’s workIs to our eyes made open.”De Rer. Nat. i. 176. What hinders it from being a final resting-place of thought is that his knowledge is confined within narrow limits. He sees but a fragment, and the “most part” of the Divine Work “is hid.” also he hath set the world in their heart] The Hebrew for “world” (primarily, “the hidden”) is that which, in its adverbial or adjectival use, constantly appears in the English Version as “for ever,” “perpetual,” “everlasting,” “always,” “eternal,” and the like. No other meaning but that of a duration, the end or beginning of which is hidden from us, and which therefore is infinite, or, at least, indefinite, is ever connected with it in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and this is its uniform sense in this book (chs. Ecclesiastes 1:4; Ecclesiastes 1:10, Ecclesiastes 2:16, Ecclesiastes 3:14, Ecclesiastes 9:6, Ecclesiastes 12:5). In post-Biblical Hebrew it passes into the sense of the Greek áἰῶ ?í, for the age, or the world considered in its relation to time and, on the theory of authorship adopted in the Introduction there is, perhaps, an approximation to that sense here. We must however translate, as the nearest equivalent, He hath set eternity (or, the everlasting) in their heart. The thought expressed is not that of the hope of an immortality, but rather the sense of the Infinite which precedes it, and out of which at last it grows. Man has the sense of an order perfect in its beauty. He has also the sense of a purpose working through the ages from everlasting to everlasting, but “beginning” and “end” are alike hidden from him and he fails to grasp it. In modern language he sees not “the beginning and the end,” the whence and the whither, of his own being, or of that of the Cosmos. He is oppressed with what German thinkers have named the Welt-Schmerz, the world-sorrow, the burden of the problems of the infinite and unfathomable Universe. Here again we have an echo of Stoic language as reproduced by Cicero, “Ipse autem homo natus est ad mundum contemplandum et imitandum” (de Nat. Deor. ii. 14. 37). All interpretations resting on later ideas of the “world,” as meaning simply the material universe, or worldly pleasures, or worldly wisdom, have to be rejected as inconsistent with lexical usage.

Rather, He hath made all (the travail, Ecclesiastes 3:10) beautiful (fit, in harmony with the whole work of God) in its time; also He hath set eternity in their heart (i. e., the heart of the sons of men, Ecclesiastes 3:10).

11. Made every thing beautiful — Koheleth’s inference as to God’s scheme for man warms into poetic beauty. Every item of it is “beautiful” in its intended place and order.