Ecclesiastes 9 · a question people ask
"but time and chance happen to them all" (9:11). Is the Preacher saying that life is just chance?
The same chapter opens, "the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God" (9:1). In 9:11 the Preacher tells what he saw under the sun: "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all" (9:11) (tap chance). The next verse goes on, "For man also doesn’t know his time" (9:12). What man doesn't know in 9:1 is love or hatred: "whether it is love or hatred, man doesn’t know it" (9:1). The chapter doesn't say how 9:1 and 9:11 fit together. It doesn't call chance God's work, and it doesn't set chance against God's hand. The notes on Ruth 2 ask the same kind of question of happened (Ruth 2:3), where the Hebrew verb is 9:11's happen. These notes keep both sayings as the chapter gives them.
The verses
“For all this I laid to my heart, even to explore all this: that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hatred, man doesn’t know it; all is before them.”
“I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. For man also doesn’t know his time. As the fish that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly on them.”
“She went, and came and gleaned in the field after the reapers; and she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.”