Bible Strands
Ecclesiastes 3:5
a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The Qoheleth addresses a general audience within a poetic meditation on life's appointed seasons. This verse continues a parallel structure contrasting human activities with divine timing.
The words — עֵת ('et) translates literally to "a time" or "appointed season," while אֲבָנִים ('a.va.Nim) means "stones." The text pairs the physical acts of casting and gathering stones with the social acts of embracing and refraining.
The thread — The motif of stones appears in Joshua 4:3 as markers taken from the Jordan, Joshua 10:27 where stones are placed to block a cave mouth, and 2 Kings 3:25 describing stones thrown on fields to destroy crops. These passages show stones used for remembrance, concealment, and warfare.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that human activities like building, discarding, and relating operate within fixed boundaries. It asks the reader to acknowledge the limits of control over when actions are appropriate.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
Cross-references
- 2 Kings 3:25 They destroyed the cities, and each man threw stones on every good field until it was covered. They stopped up every spring and cut down every good tree. Only Kir-haraseth was left with stones in place, but men with slings surrounded it and attacked it as well.
- Joshua 10:27 At sunset Joshua ordered that they be taken down from the trees and thrown into the cave in which they had hidden. Then large stones were placed against the mouth of the cave, and the stones are there to this day.
- Joshua 4:3 and command them: ‘Take up for yourselves twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan where the priests were standing, carry them with you, and set them down in the place where you spend the night.’”
- Joel 2:16 Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, gather the children, even those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber.
- 1 Samuel 21:4 “There is no common bread on hand,” the priest replied, “but there is some consecrated bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.”
- 2 Samuel 18:17 They took Absalom, cast him into a large pit in the forest, and piled a huge mound of stones over him. Meanwhile, all the Israelites fled, each to his home.
- Exodus 19:15 “Be prepared for the third day,” he said to the people. “Do not draw near to a woman.”
- Song of Solomon 2:6 His left hand is under my head, and his right arm embraces me.
- 1 Corinthians 7:5 Do not deprive each other, except by mutual consent and for a time, so you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you through your lack of self-control.