Start here · day 14 of 14 · Justice, mercy, and the bad days
עֵת
Where you go from here
Ecclesiastes 3
First, read it
Ecclesiastes 3
Read it before the notes below. They are worth more once you have your own impression of it.
Open Ecclesiastes 3Then, the idea
To every thing there is a season. A time to be born and a time to die, to plant and to pluck up, to keep silence and to speak.
It is a strange, honest book. It refuses easy answers and still ends up telling you to eat your bread, do your work, and not waste the life you have.
You have now read from the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings — all three parts of the Hebrew Bible, in fourteen days. That is a real foundation. The next step is a rhythm rather than a finish line, and there are three good ones below.
One word of Hebrew
עֵת
et — a time, a season, the right moment
Not clock time. The right time for a particular thing — which is why the same word is used for the festivals: appointed times, moments the year keeps for you.
And one question
Fourteen days ago, what did you expect this book to be? What is it turning out to be?
Nobody is marking this. Sit with it on the way to work.
If this one landed: Pick your rhythm.
That is the fourteen days
What now
You have read from all three parts of the Hebrew Bible. The point was never to finish — it was to end up with a rhythm you can keep. Here are three, and they work together.
- A portion a weekThe Torah is divided into fifty four pieces and read straight through, one a week, finishing and starting again each autumn. Join wherever the year is. In twelve months you will have read all five books without ever deciding what to read next.About 25 minutes a week
- The year's own shapeThe Hebrew calendar has appointed times built into it — a spring cluster about freedom, an autumn cluster about starting again. Each one has a page here: what it is, what happens, and why it might matter to you.Follow the calendar
- A book at a timeThirty nine books and nine hundred and twenty nine chapters are here to read, with nothing between you and the page. Start with a short one — Ruth, Jonah, Ecclesiastes — and go at your own pace.Read anything, any time