Ecclesiastes 3:17

God shall judge the righteous and the wicked The words "I said in my heart" introduce this as the first thought that rises unbidden at the sight of the wrong-doing in the world. It was, as it were, an immediate intuitive judgment, as distinguished from those which are introduced by "I returned," or "I considered" (chap. Ecclesiastes 4:1; Ecclesiastes 4:4; Ecclesiastes 4:7; Ecclesiastes 4:15). In the emphatic "there is a time there," we may, perhaps, trace, as in the grand abruptness of Medea's blessing on her children,

Εὐδαιμονοίτον· ἀλλʼ ἐκεί· τὰ δʼ ἐνθάδε

Πάτηρ ἀφείλετʼ.

"All good be with you! but it must be there;

Hereit is stolen from you by your sire."

Eurip. Med. 1065.

or in Plato, ἡ ἐκείσε πορεία, ("the journey thither" Phaed. p. 107 d), and in the "thatworld" of Luke 20:35, a passing belief in a judgment after death as redressing the wrongs of earth, soon to be, for a time, at least, traversed and overclouded by the sceptical thoughts with which the writer had come in contact. It is, however, possible that "there" may refer to the unfathomed depths of the divine Judgment which works, through long delay, at its appointed time, and in this case the thought finds a parallel in the complaint and confession of Psalms 73:17-28. The one immediate conviction is, however, balanced in the conflict of thought through which the Debater is passing, by another which seems incompatible with it.