Ecclesiastes 3:8

A time to love, and a time, to hate Greek thought again supplies us with a parallel,

ἡμεῖς δὲ πῶς οὐ γνωσόμεσθα σωφρονεῖν ;

ἐγὼ δʼ, ἐπίσταμαι γὰρ ἀρτίως ὅτι

ὅ τʼ ἐχθρὸς ἡμῖν ἐς τοσόνδʼ ἐχθαρτέος,

ὡς καὶ φιλήσων αὖθις, ἔς τε τὸν φίλον

τοσαῦθʼ ὑπουργῶν ὠφελεῖν βουλήσομαι,

ὡς αἰὲν οὑ μενοῦντα.

"Shall not we too learn

Our lesson of true wisdom? I indeed

Have learnt but now that we should hate a foe

Only so far as one that yet may love,

And to a friend just so much help I'll give

As unto one that will not always stay."

Soph. Aias, 680 686.

a time of war, and a time of peace The change in the Hebrew, as in the English, from verbs in the infinitive to substantives is probably intended to emphasize the completion of the list. The words are of course closely connected with the "love" and "hate" of the preceding clause, but differ in referring to the wider range of national relations. Here also the wisdom of a king or statesman lies in discerning the opportuneness of war or peace, in seeing when the maxim "si vis pacem para bellum" is applicable or inapplicable.

It may be well to repeat here what was said at the outset in reference to this list of times and seasons, that the idea of a Necessity, Fate, Predestination, which many interpreters, bent on finding traces of a Stoic fatalism, have read into the teaching of the section, is really foreign to the writer's thoughts. That which he insists on is the thought that the circumstances and events of life form part of a Divine Order, are not things that come at random, and that wisdom, and therefore such a measure of happiness as is attainable, lies in adapting ourselves to the order and accepting the guidance of events in great things and small, while shame and confusion come from resisting it. The lesson is in fact identical with one very familiar to us at once in the commonest of all proverbs, "Take time by the forelock;" "Time and tide wait for no man," and in a loftier strain,

"There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the remnant of their lives

Is bound in shallows and in miseries."

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, iv. 3.

It is well to remember such counsels of prudence. It is well also to remember that a yet higher wisdom bids us in the highest work "to be instant, in season, out of season" (εὐκαίρως, ἀκαίρως, 2 Timothy 4:2).