{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4121","native_reference":{"book_number":250,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":9,"verse_to":9},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Jerome</b>: \"What<br/>gain, then, has the worker in exchange for all his toil? I have observed the task which God has given<br/>the sons of man to be concerned with: He made everything beautiful in its time;<br/>He has also put an enigma into their minds so that man cannot comprehend what<br/>God has done from the beginning to end.\" The<br/>opinion of many other scholars on this passage does not escape me, because in<br/>this world God conceded to the teachers of perverse doctrines their true<br/>occupation, lest man's idle mind should become slow and while thinking that<br/>God's creations are good, yet nonetheless not be able to see them as the<br/>natural knowledge of the world. But the<br/>Hebrew who taught me the Scriptures explained it in this way: when all things<br/>are placed in their own time and there is a time for destroying or building,<br/>weeping and laughing, silence and speaking, and others things which are said<br/>about time, why do we try to survive in vain and believe the labours of this<br/>short life to be perpetual? And<br/>according to the Gospel we are not even happy, and it is called wickedness<br/>since we think nothing of tomorrow. [Cfr Matth. 6, 34.] For what more are we able to have in this<br/>world than continual striving in that toil, which God has given to man, so that<br/>one man may gain more by following others, in a situation where he is able to<br/>learn and exercise himself? For all that<br/>God does is good, but good in his world. <br/>It is good to wake and to sleep, but it is not good to be always awake<br/>or asleep, since in turn each and every thing can be considered good, when<br/>there is need, according to God's plan. <br/>Moreover God also created the world to be inhabited by men, so that they<br/>should enjoy the variation of time, and not seek the causes nature, how all<br/>things are made, why He made this or that grow or change from the beginning of<br/>the world until now.<br/><i>— Commentary on Ecclesiastes</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"ebd21d27bd1929b6a68020d8160403f8cb97aeffc5b6e5005bf00c70c94007bf","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4121,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"d0aded2e3cb2a7d7d4cce1817de2f08959b322edc5697023a465a9e9bf77e744","translator":null,"work":null}