By: Rabbi Daniel Reifman
The book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), traditionally read on Sukkot, is noteworthy for the way it ranks among both the most challenging and beloved books of Tanakh. The author introduces himself as “Koheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem,” and offers his observations, assessments, and advice on the human condition and on our relationship to God. The book does not always make for easy reading: Kohelet’s train of thought sometimes feels disjointed, and his appraisals can be unsparing to the point of despair. Yet through it all, it is hard not to be taken with his plainspoken, deeply felt observations, making Kohelet an eminently relatable – and quotable – work.
The most famous passage in Kohelet is almost certainly the poem known as the Catalogue of Times (3:1-8): “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…” In orderly couplets, the poem runs the gamut of human experiences and activities – birth and death, demolishing and building, weeping and laughter, war and peace – emphasizing that in the scheme of God’s creation, everything has its own time.
Yet the simplicity of Kohelet’s poem is deceptive: what does it mean for everything to have its own time? That one should strive for balance between these polar opposites? That one is responsible for intuiting when is the proper time for each type of activity? Or perhaps that God is controlling our every move, dictating when we do what, whether we realize it or not? As with many cryptic passages in Kohelet, commentators have offered a wide array of approaches as to the meaning of the Catalogue. What is remarkable about this passage is how that interpretive range is also reflected in the way the Catalogue has been cited in popular culture, in politics, and in the arts.
For contemporary English-speaking readers, it is virtually impossible to read the Catalogue of Times without recalling Pete Seeger’s song “To Everything There is a Season,” whose adaptation by the folk-rock group The Byrds remains one of the iconic sounds of the 1960s. The song’s cultural longevity is all the more remarkable considering that it consists of little more than the text of Kohelet set to music. Seeger’s lyrics are a lightly-edited version of the King James translation, the only additions being the refrain – “Turn! Turn! Turn!” – and the closing line – “A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.” The refrain is fairly ambiguous, but the final line is decisive, and swings the entire poem toward the purpose that Seeger wished to use it for: a war protest song. The concluding line – with its implicit plea for action – clearly interprets the poem as advice on how to live one’s life. The pairings of opposite activities could be understood as exhorting the reader to intuit the proper time for each of these activities, and Seeger is insisting that the time for peace is overdue.
Of course, given the emphasis that Seeger places on the very last element in the poem, one might argue that the song is not really interpreting the poem as much as using it for a very narrow social or political purpose. Hence it is important to note that Seeger is not alone in focusing on the war/peace antithesis: the Midrash, too, uses this final line as the key for understanding fully half the antithetical pairings in the poem. For example: “‘A time to plant’ – in peacetime, ‘and a time to uproot that which is planted’ – in wartime; ‘a time to kill’ – in wartime, ‘and a time to heal’ – in peacetime” (Kohelet Rabbah 3:2-3). What justifies making the last line the key to interpreting the poem overall? One possibility is that when it comes to viewing human life in binary terms, as Kohelet has chosen to do here, the distinction between war and peace is one of the starkest, most all-encompassing contrasts imaginable. War entails an entirely different mode of behavior, even a different moral code: kill or be killed, uproot and destroy or risk giving strategic advantages to one’s enemies. If the Catalogue constitutes advice on how to live one’s life, then the Midrash’s interpretation could be read as an appeal not to allow the mentality of wartime to become all-consuming, not to be seduced by an ideology of permanent hatred. The necessary counterbalance to war is peace, a time that demands of us to plant, build, heal, and love.
The notion of war and peace as mutually exclusive experiences was powerfully expressed by Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in his remarks at the signing of the Oslo I Accord between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1993. As a lifelong soldier, diplomat, and politician, Rabin knew firsthand both the immense sense of sacrifice and loss and the intense desire for peace, and he avoided any impression that this historic act of mutual recognition between enemies somehow mitigated the terrible experience of the conflict. Rabin memorably closed his speech by quoting the Catalogue of Times, concluding, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the time for peace has come,” and indeed there are few texts better suited to express the emotional tension of that moment. Kohelet’s message is that both sets of experiences – the anguish of war and the aspiration for peace – are real and valid for their respective “times.”
Of course, the notion that the poem is offering some sort of advice assumes that people have agency over when to engage in each of these activities. Yet this assumption is challenged by the very first pair of activities mentioned in the Catalogue: “A time to be born and a time to die.” No one has control over when they are born, and the same is usually true regarding the time of one’s death. Perhaps this phrase, placed prominently at the beginning of the poem, indicates that the “season” and “time” for each of these actions is not the time for us to choose, but rather the time that God has already chosen. This understanding would also fit some of the sentiments expressed in the postscript to the poem, where Kohelet disparages human endeavor as pointless (“What profit has the worker from his toil?” [3:9]), and implies that God’s design for the world is invariable (“I know that, whatever God does, it shall be forever: nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it” [3:12]).
Based on this evidence, one might conclude that the poem offers not advice as to how to live one’s life, but rather perspective for living life with little agency over one’s fate. This resonates with the way that the Catalogue of Times is cited in contemporary culture on sympathy cards and in other moments of somber reflection, with the implication that Kohelet is describing the essential powerlessness of the human condition. As discomfiting as it may be to sense that we are not necessarily masters of our own fate, there is also a measure of comfort in acknowledging that the vicissitudes of life are frequently beyond our control: to recognize the vulnerability of our existence is also to appreciate that which binds us all together.
Perhaps there is also comfort to be found in a different aspect of Kohelet’s postscript: “[God] brings everything to pass precisely at its time… but without people ever guessing, from first to last, all the things that God brings to pass” (3:11). Kohelet seems to be saying that not only has God determined the course of our lives, but also that His plan is largely hidden from us. Why is it significant – or desirable – that humanity cannot perceive the entirety of God’s design? The medieval French commentator Rabbi Yosef Kara (~1065–1135) observes that if people were privy to the full scope of their lives, they would never be able to find pleasure or optimism in times of tranquility – and consequently to build, to plant, etc. – since they would always be concerned about times of sorrow that were to come. To whatever extent God has predetermined our path in life, He has also made it possible for us to live in the moment, taking pride in our accomplishments and savoring periods of respite and joy.
Continue exploring Kohelet with Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek’s The Success of Kohelet.
