Passage Research
Ecclesiastes 3 — Sermon Preparation
The famous poem on seasons — there is a time for everything — anchors a meditation on divine timing and the limits of human knowledge. Below is a research summary for Ecclesiastes 3, drawn from openly licensed scholarly databases — original-language morphology, classic sermons from the church fathers through the Puritans, and ancient geography data.
- 22
- verses
- 273 / 117
- Hebrew words / lemmas
- 6
- classic sermon excerpts
- 4
- preachers & commentators
Ecclesiastes 3 in the Hebrew
Distinctive vocabulary of this chapter, based on original-language morphology.
| Hebrew | Transliteration | Strong's | Count | Glosses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| עֵת | ʻêth | H6256 | 31 | time, now |
| אָדָם | ʼâdâm | H120 | 8 | ruddy, human being |
| רָאָה | râʼâh | H7200 | 6 | see |
| מִקְרֶה | miqreh | H4745 | 3 | met, accident |
| בְּהֵמָה | bᵉhêmâh | H929 | 4 | dumb, animal |
| טוֹב | ṭôwb | H2896 | 4 | good |
| מַעֲשֶׂה | maʻăseh | H4639 | 3 | action, transaction |
How preachers through history handled this text
6 public-domain excerpts on Ecclesiastes 3, from the church fathers to the Puritans.
“A TIME TO PLANT' A time to plant.'--Eccles. iii. 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. …”
— Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of the Holy Scriptures: Second Kings from Chap., on Ecclesiastes 3:2–10 (Public Domain)
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