A time to be born: the Revised Standard Version expression to be born is passive, and although this is sometimes the sense of this verb, more often than not it is the active sense “to give birth” that is intended. Probably Revised Standard Version and others that use the passive form have made their choice under the influence of the following verb “to die.” This way they can make a neat pair with a common subject. This attempt at neatness is not necessary, and in fact we can avoid this problem by using a general expression “birth.” Thus we may say “a time for birth,” although “a time for giving birth” is probably more correct.

A time to die is the other extremity of life. It is pointless to ask how the person died. All Qoheleth is saying is that a person dies at an appointed time; he says nothing about who determines the time.

This first pair of activities may be translated as “We give birth at a fixed time, and we die at a fixed time.”

Here and in what follows Qoheleth uses pairs of opposites. By giving the extremes he actually is saying that everything between birth and death happens at certain times.

A time to plant: moving from the moments of birth and death, Qoheleth now gives some examples from life between those extremes. It is possible that Qoheleth is referring to the fact that the farmer knows when it is the best time to plant. If the farmer expects a good harvest, he does not plant crops at any time, but only at the proper time to ensure growth.

Often translators will find that a particular language requires that certain verbs must be accompanied by an object in order for them to have meaning. It is probable that the verb plant will require mention of what is to be planted. In all such cases we should choose a very general term as object. Here “a time to plant crops” or “a time to plant something” may be appropriate. Unless absolutely necessary, we should avoid naming a certain crop or plant, because that may not be consistent with Israel’s geography and culture. If the translator has no choice but to mention a particular crop, then it should be one that can be dug or pulled up, so as to match the verb that follows.

A time to pluck up what is planted: although this action may not include every crop that people grow (for example, this verb does not apply to fruit or other crops), the sense is of the appropriate time for harvesting a crop. That may be determined by the market or by the weather, or by the state of the crop itself when ripe. But harvesting is done according to appropriate times.

Certain language families prefer to avoid passive expressions like “what is planted.” Again an appropriate subject pronoun can be added, such as “A time for you to dig up what you have planted.” If the repetitions of these clauses is unnatural, then the translator can substitute a pronoun for the repeated object: for example, “There is a set time for planting things, and a time for harvesting them.”

Two models for translation are:

• There is a good time to plant [crops] and a good time to dig them up.

• We plant food at certain times and we harvest it at a certain time.

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Zogbo, Lynell. A Handbook on the Book of Ecclesiates. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .