What Does Ecclesiastes 3:5 Mean?
A time to hurl stones away, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to keep far from embracing.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
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;THE KEY
The verse gives gathering and distance, like embracing and letting go, their own place in the rhythm of life.
THE MEANING
Your life contains seasons when things are brought together and seasons when they are released from contact. Distance can belong to its moment just as an embrace can; neither movement alone tells the whole story of a relationship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Distance does not automatically mean rejection; this verse makes room for a season when closeness is withheld.
THE ROOT
כְּנוֹס
kenos
GROWS FROM
כנס
k-n-s
Gather, assemble, or bring in.
“gather stones” in this verse is kenos. The word for gathering stones comes from the same root as words for an assembly or a gathering. The stones are not only collected; they are brought into shared form.
ALSO GROWS
keneset: Assembly
כְּנֶסֶת
The same root makes gathering sound like forming a body of people, not merely collecting separate things.
kinus: Gathering or convening
כִּנּוּס
This branch echoes the deliberate bringing together expressed by the stones.
לִרְחוֹק מֵחַבֵּק
lirchoq mechabeq
GROWS FROM
רחק
r-ḥ-q
Be far or distant; put distance between.
“keep far from embracing” in this verse is lirchoq mechabeq. The Hebrew presents restraint as distance: a season of being far from an embrace. That makes space itself one of the verse’s movements, alongside gathering and touch.
ALSO GROWS
rachok: Far, distant
רָחוֹק
It names the spatial quality held inside “refrain from embracing.”
hirchiq: Put far away, remove
הִרְחִיק
This branch shows distance as something made or widened, not only something passively endured.
לַחֲבוֹק
lachavoq
GROWS FROM
חבק
ḥ-b-q
Clasp or embrace.
“embrace” in this verse is lachavoq. The verse places bodily closeness beside bodily distance, giving each its own time. The Hebrew makes the contrast tangible: clasping in one season, being far from clasping in another.
ALSO GROWS
hibbuq: Embrace
חִבּוּק
This noun preserves the physical closeness of the action in the verse.
mechabeq: One embracing; embracing
מְחַבֵּק
This form names the act the verse says can be fitting in its season.
THE PATTERN
Life’s rhythms include both bringing things into shared form and making space between them.
Is not all the land before your face? I pray you, part from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you go to the right hand, then I will go to the left.His left hand is beneath my head, and his right hand embraces me.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.Peter’s image turns the gathered stones into a house: separate pieces become a shared dwelling when brought together. It extends the verse’s movement from collecting stones toward the way people form something together.
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