Ecclesiastes 3:1
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Context
This verse introduces the celebrated "a time for everything" poem of verses 2 through 8, framing the changing seasons of life as part of an ordered design.
What Does Ecclesiastes 3:1 Mean?
This famous verse means that life moves in appointed seasons, and there is a fitting time for each kind of experience we pass through. It opens the well-known poem of "a time to be born, and a time to die," naming the rhythm of opposites that fills a human life. Rather than treating change as chaos, the Preacher sees an ordered pattern: every purpose has its proper hour.
The Hebrew word for "season" points to an appointed, fitting moment, while "time" speaks of the occasion proper to an event. Together they teach a quiet wisdom: we are not in control of the calendar of our lives, and trying to force a season before its time only brings frustration. There is freedom in this. We can stop demanding that joy never give way to grief, or that one chapter last forever. Instead we learn to receive each season from God's hand, trusting that He who sets the times also walks with us through every one of them, planting and uprooting, weeping and laughing, in their turn.
In the Original Language
The verse pairs zeman (זְמָן), an appointed season, with et (עֵת), the right or proper time for a given matter.
Cross References
“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.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:11
“My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.”
- Psalm 31:15
“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.”
- Galatians 4:4
Application
Receive your present season -- whether of planting or uprooting, weeping or laughing -- as something God has measured out, and resist forcing what its hour has not yet come.