Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ecclesiastes · About this commentary
Eternity in Their Hearts
Ecclesiastes 3:9-15
9 What profit has he who works in that in which he labors? · WEB
A single Hebrew word explains why the search that cannot succeed is also impossible to abandon.
Verse 9 repeats the book's opening question about profit, and verse 10 repeats chapter 1's answer: the burden is given Ecclesiastes 1:13.
Then verse 11, which is the most important sentence in the chapter and possibly in the book. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can't find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end.
The middle clause is rendered two ways in the English translations. Some read eternity in the heart; older ones read the world. The Hebrew noun is olam, and the book itself settles which sense it uses, because the word falls seven times here and the other six are all about duration: the earth remains forever Ecclesiastes 1:4, a thing has been long ago Ecclesiastes 1:10, there is no memory forever Ecclesiastes 2:16, whatever God does shall be forever Ecclesiastes 3:14, the dead have perished long ago Ecclesiastes 9:6, and a man goes to his everlasting home Ecclesiastes 12:5.
So what is set in the heart is a sense of duration — of before and after, of a whole that extends past the piece anyone can see.
And that is the diagnosis the book has needed. The creature is built to want the beginning-to-end view and is denied it. The frustration is not a defect in his effort; it is the exact gap between the capacity given and the access withheld.
Verse 13 supplies the second commendation, now called the gift of God. Verse 14 says God's work shall be forever — the same word — with nothing addable and nothing removable, that men should fear before him.
The hunger is God's gift. So is the limit.
settled What this mark means