In the Old Testament, there were three kings that governed the ancient unified nation of Israel: Saul, David and Solomon.  Each of these three kings was progressively better than  the other.  Saul became king at the insistence of the people, which Yahweh reluctantly allowed.  Later, David ruled and loved Yahweh so much, he was considered “a man after Yahweh’s own heart”, even though he was a flawed human being.  But David’s son Solomon was the greatest of them all.  Soon, after he became king, Yahweh appeared unto Solomon in a dream (1 Kings 3:5), and said (paraphrasing) “Whatever you ask, I will give it to you”.  Instead of asking for fame, wealth, property and power, he asked Yahweh to give him wisdom so that he will be able to properly rule over Yahweh’s people.

This pleased Yahweh so much that not only did he grant Solomon his wish, he also granted him all the other things that he didn’t ask for: riches, honor and length of days and such admiration that no person like him has ever existed either before or since.  (1 Kings. 3:11-14)

It was Solomon who built the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem, having brought a time of peace in the region as had never been known.  And his wisdom can be seen today by his writings which are mostly found the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.  These are Old Testament books that are widely read, but rarely studied.  So, it came as a surprise today when a friend of mine wrote me a brief note, asking for my thoughts of one short verse in Ecclesiastes which seemed confusing to her.

The scripture in question was Eccl. 3:11.  She had been reading this passage from the NIV Bible, which had footnotes at the bottom of the page which seemed to contradict the text in verse 11–“He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set ETERNITY in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what [Yahweh] has done from beginning to end.”

Footnotes:  Ecclesiastes 3:11 “Or also placed IGNORANCE in the human heart.”  As my friend said, “It just seemed odd to replace ETERNITY with IGNORANCE.”

Now I undestood her cause of confusion.  How could a passage be identifying both “eternity” and “ignorance” from the same root word?  There are two features that are “sometimes” useful which we find in modern Bibles: the notes in the margin and the footnotes at the bottom.  In either case, they may enhance the readers understanding of what the text says, but we have to temper what those additional entries say and not assume that they are conveying an accurate meaning of what the author originally wrote.

In this case, the word “eternity” would be a closer noun than “ignorance”, as the latter loses all of the meaning of the Hebrew text.  In fact, even the word “eternity” expresses the Hebrew words incorrectly from what is actually written.  In the original text, this verse does convey a time-frame, but that thought occurs at the end of the verse, not in the middle of it where the “heart” is mentioned.  If you re-read all of Eccl. 3, you’ll see that this is clearly the pattern of what Solomon was saying.  Beginning, then end.  Kill, heal.  Laugh, cry.  Lose, keep, etc.  He was pointing out the polar opposites of each moment, emotion, activity, etc. in the first 10 verses.  Accordingly, when we get to verse 11, that same pattern continues, but it’s harder to see because even the KJV does a mediocre job at transliterating it correctly.

The version of the Bible my friend was using, the NIV, was first introduced in 1970.  This makes it one of the youngest translations of the Bible on the market.  I won’t criticize the things it offers that are of value.  But it takes the serious student of the Bible in the wrong direction if one is trying to dig into the original meaning of scripture.  THAT is something than can only be done by trying to get “into the mind” of the author, and to do so, I find it’s far more beneficial to attempt that by reading the text in its original language.

2 Tim. 2:15–“Study to shew thyself approved unto Yahweh, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Going BACKWARDS to discover hidden meanings takes us closer—not further away—from what is actually intended.  It’s like that telephone game, where you all sit in a circle and one person whispers something to the person next to them, which gets passed around the circle. By the time the final person says what they were told, it may resemble none of the original comment.

When a contemporary writer inserts their thought about what a verse means, it is just their opinion.  To “divide the word of truth” requires us to read those words as originally written.

More on v. 11—the time-frame I mentioned that is found here, is only found in Solomon’s summary of this thought.  When he mentions the “heart”, he did not convey a period of time.  Rather, he expressed a sort of “mystery”, which I’ll explain in a moment.  The “time” he talked about, like all the rest of ch. 3, has a starting and ending to it.

The word “eternity” loses the feel of Solomon’s expression because it leaves us open-ended, both the front and the rear.  “Eternity” has no beginning and no end.  Why would Solomon have thrown this vague measurement into ch. 3 when every other thought is specific?  Ans: he wouldn’t and he didn’t.  The NIV rendition takes the reader away from both the fundamental meaning of Solomon’s words and their footnoted detail takes it further beyond that.

The “time” that he describes, at the end of the verse is actually a reference to the FIRST period of creation of Gen. 1:1 before it was destroyed in Gen. 1:2.  To understand it, I’ll explain the heart analogy, as I alluded to above.  The heart has no time (eternity) nor degree of intellect (ignorance) associated with it.  Rather, the word in Hebrew which explains the heart in this verse is “e-olm”, meaning “the-obscurity”, which is the furthest thing from either eternity OR ignorance.  So, the adjective most closely associated with the “heart” in v. 11 would be “obscure”.

I know what you’re thinking. If the heart is “obscure” when how can all the rest of ch. 3 be describing firm starting and stopping points?  It is because this portion of v. 11 is just a filler but not the actual complete thought that Solomon is expressing.  The “time” he refers to DOES have a beginning and END.  It is nothing less than the period of the first creation—the time of the dinosaurs—which OBVIOUSLY had an “END”.  And it’s something we’ll never understand—how did he DO that?–which makes it “obscure”.

Digging deeper into v. 11, here’s how it reads in the KJV version–“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that Yahweh maketh from [the] beginning to the end.” 

There is no word “the” in the original text which precedes the word “beginning”.  This is important to note because each book of the O.T. was originally identified from the first word in the first verse.  In this case the Hebrew word “barashith”, rendered “beginning” is actually Solomon’s way of saying this.  His use of the word “Beginning” is not a description of “time”.  It is an identifier of the first book of the Bible by NAME.

To properly understand verse 11, I’m going to re-write it in a way that the correct meaning is not lost: “And [Yahweh] he made everything lovely in season of him. Moreover, he placed obscurity into the heart so that no man shall find the deed that Yahweh did…FROM BEGINNING TO TERMINATION.”   Simply put, the human heart cannot understand the process by which Yahweh created this first period of creation, including all of the pre-historic living things, then ended it, or “terminated” all former life.”

In verse 11, Solomon shows us that every part of Yahweh’s original creation had both a beginning and and end, and now it’s all gone, or terminated, which allowed the slate to be cleared and began the 2nd period of creation and everything we are familiar with today.

Start, then end.  And thus, Solomon continued with the identical pattern of the first 10 verses of chapter 3.  The “end” that Solomon refers to is not the “end of time”.  It is simply the “end” of that specific era which concluded the time of destruction of the original period of creation.

This short verse in Ecclesiastes suddenly packed a bigger punch than I had ever seen before.  What was most remarkable was the fact that I figured this whole thing out simply by digging deep into the original text, in its original language and allow the facts to speak for themselves.  I have become familiar with most of Solomon’s writings, but on more of a “global” scale, where I try to understand the big picture.  I’ve never dug this deep into this verse before, and seeing it in such minute detail was really extraordinary.

Verse 11 clearly is a description of that first period of creation because it ended, or was terminated.  If we read the whole of v. 11 and equate it with our modern creation, Solomon’s last words would make no sense.  At this point, all of the 2nd creation still exists!  So, for him to describe what Yahweh made, or “his work” from beginning to end, it can ONLY be identifying that former time.  Because THIS period of creation, with everything we see around us HAS NOT YET ENDED.

Incidentally, one of the names which Yahshua uses to refer to himself actually appears 3 times in verse 11. The reason that it’s not seen in any translations is because that particular word is “visible” only.  It is formed by a combination of Hebrew letters that make the word unpronounceable.  Paul wrote about this phenomena in Eph. 3:4–“Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of the Anointed.”  Notice, Paul did not say “when you read or hear…”, as he understood that there would be no word that could be heard.

Thus, there’s no equivalent language to translate this word into.  So, the subsequent words “he” or “God” that are seen in our modern Bibles are, without a doubt, Yahshua, the author of all creation.  It is for this reason that I immediately realized exactly what Solomon was saying in Eccl. 3:11.  I saw it right away and it was THIS revelation that made the meaning jump off the page.

And you thought Solomon was only clever about his threat to cut a baby in half.  Smart guy, that Solomon.