What can people enjoy when they cannot know the whole course of God’s work?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

There is a time for the contrasting events of life, but people cannot grasp God’s work from beginning to end. The Preacher values doing good and enjoying work as God’s gifts. He also faces injustice and the shared bodily death of humans and animals.

Chapter breakdown

The chapter names times for birth and death, planting and uprooting, killing and healing, breaking down and building. Weeping, laughter, mourning, dancing, gathering, embracing, keeping, losing, silence, speech, love, hatred, war, and peace all have their times. The Preacher asks what work adds to this changing life. God makes things good in their time, yet people cannot discover his work from beginning to end. The Preacher finds value in rejoicing, doing good, and enjoying food, drink, and labor as gifts from God. God’s work endures; people cannot add to it or take from it. God restores what is past.

The Preacher also sees wickedness where judgment and justice should be. He says that God will judge both the just and the wicked at the proper time. He then compares human death with animal death: both breathe, die, and return to the earth. Challoner explains that the comparison concerns bodily life.

The question about the human spirit rising and the animal spirit descending receives another note. Challoner says that people cannot observe a spirit directly in this life and describes the animal spirit as ending with bodily death. The Preacher closes by valuing enjoyment of one’s work, since no one can bring a person to know what will happen after him.

The story inside

The opening pairs show how life changes from one season to another. The reflection then turns to God’s lasting work, which people cannot fully grasp. Injustice and death make those limits concrete. The Preacher’s final counsel returns to the work people can enjoy during their own lives.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The list holds opposite events together instead of treating life as one unchanging season (3:1–8).
2
Doing good and enjoying work are called gifts from God even when his whole work cannot be understood (3:11–14).
3
Challoner limits the comparison with animals to bodily life and explains the question about spirits separately (3:19–21).

Test your recall

What gifts can a person enjoy, and how does Challoner qualify the comparison between humans and animals?

Show answer

A person can rejoice, do good, eat, drink, and enjoy work as gifts from God. Challoner says that the equality with animals concerns bodily life, not a claim that human and animal spirits are identical (3:12–13, 19–21).

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 70262–70270
3:1. All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven. 3:2. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. 3:3. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to destroy, and a time to build.
Lines 70287–70298
3:10. I have seen the trouble, which God hath given the sons of men to be exercised in it. 3:11. He hath made all things good in their time, and hath delivered the world to their consideration, so that man cannot find out the work which God hath made from the beginning to the end. 3:12. And I have known that there was no better thing than to rejoice, and to do well in this life. 3:13. For every man that eateth and drinketh, and seeth good of his
Lines 70330–70334
Who knoweth, etc.... Viz., experimentally: since no one in this life can see a spirit. But as to the spirit of the beasts, which is merely animal, and become extinct by the death of the beast, who can tell the manner it acts so as to give life and motion, and by death to descend downward, that is, to be no more?