Bible Strands
Ecclesiastes 3:8
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Qohelet addresses a general audience, delivering the final pair in a litany of opposites (vv. 1–8) that breaks into the rhetorical question of v. 9.
The words — שׂנֵא (sānē', H8130), "to hate," is the most theologically charged term in the verse; it is the same root Jesus deploys in Luke 14:26.
The thread — The love/hate pairing runs alongside the costly, self-giving love of Ephesians 5:25, 28 and the hyperbolic "hate" of Luke 14:26, where both terms are stripped of sentiment and tied to concrete action.
Why it lands — The verse refuses to let the reader treat love as the only legitimate moral register; it insists that opposition and conflict are part of the ordered life, not its failure.
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 love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Cross-references
- Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her
- Ephesians 5:28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
- Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple.
- 1 Kings 5:4 But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side, and there is no adversary or crisis.
- 2 Chronicles 19:2 Jehu son of Hanani the seer went out to confront him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Because of this, the wrath of the LORD is upon you.
- Psalms 139:21 Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD, and detest those who rise against You?
- Genesis 14:14 And when Abram heard that his relative had been captured, he mobilized the 318 trained men born in his household, and they set out in pursuit as far as Dan.
- Joshua 8:1 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid or discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. See, I have delivered into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land.
- Joshua 11:23 So Joshua took the entire land, in keeping with all that the LORD had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to the allotments to their tribes. Then the land had rest from war.
- 2 Samuel 10:6 When the Ammonites realized that they had become a stench to David, they hired twenty thousand Aramean foot soldiers from Beth-rehob and Zoba, as well as a thousand men from the king of Maacah and twelve thousand men from Tob.