Ecclesiastes 3:15

God requireth that which is past Better, seeks after that which is put to flight. The old thought of the uniformity of sequence in nature and in history which had before seemed oppressive in its monotony, has been balanced by the thought of God's perfection and the beauty of His order, and by the "fear" which grows out of it. It is followed up by a new aspect of the same truth. The past is thought of as vanishing, "put to flight," receding into the dim distance. It might seem to be passing into the abyss of oblivion, but God recalls it (this is obviously the meaning of "require" as used by the translators of the A. V. in its strict etymological sense), brings back the same order, or an analogous order of events, and so history repeats itself. The strange rendering adopted by the Targum and some modern interpreters, "God seeks the persecuted," i.e.visits and protects them, though tenable as a translation, introduces an idea quite foreign to the train of thought.