Is eternity forever or just for a long time?

Is eternity forever or just for a long time? Isn't eternity forever? Always? Forever going back in time and forever going forward in time? Well, that depends.

I started writing about "Love the Lord your God with all your soul, minds, and strength".

Something in it got too detailed, so I had to write something else first about when Jesus said, "Consider carefully what you hear".

But something in it also got too detailed, so I set that aside as well, and began work on "Hearing is good. Understanding is better. Action is needed!"

As of right now, none of them are finished. They're all hanging on "Is eternity forever or just for a long time?", because something came up that needed to be answered, but deserves its own space.

Let's hope this one actually gets done with no more interruptions!

What is eternity - a view from Bing Image Creator

I've been using Bing Image Creator lately. Since they went to DALL-E 4, with GPT 4, they've been pretty good.

I asked it to "make an ethereal watercolor image of eternity".

With no further instruction, the adjacent image is one of four similar ones it generated.

Of course, I wanted to know why does it look like this? So I asked it, "what characteristics of eternity did you use to create the images?"

Its response was: "To create the images, I used some keywords and concepts related to eternity, such as infinity, timelessness, transcendence, and mystery. I also used watercolor as a medium to create a soft and dreamy effect. I hope you enjoy the images as a source of inspiration."

Of course, let's give credit where it's really due. I'm the one who asked for watercolor because I thought it would make for a more ethereal effect. But the key words it found for "eternity" do a good job of representing a variety of current views on what eternity is: infinity, timelessness, transcendence, and mystery.

Especially relevant to where this is going is the word mystery. I was surprised it came up on Bing Chat's search. But then, I was also surprised it showed up in a religious point of view of eternity. That was one of the driving forces for writing this in the first place.

Now, let's not go overboard here. The concept of mystery showed up in both cases - religious definitions and a web search by a software robot that does what it's told to do. It's not like Bing Chat understands what it puts out. I have to mention that because of the earlier reference to "Hearing is good. Understanding is better. Action is needed!" that's currently delayed to write this.

So the "mystery" ot found may or may not have been a religious mystery. Further, if it was religious in nature, it may very wee be because my opening question was "Do Jews today believe in resurrection or not? If it's both, which sects believe in oe or the other?"

Given that I kept the whole chain as one topic, there was a religious direction to the questions already established.

Is eternity forever - a question from Ecclesiastes

A passage in Ecclesiastes raised this question of "Is eternity forever or is it just a long time?"

A Time for Everything

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11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
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No context is included because the question is straightforward. Does eternity, as we read the NIV translation, really mean eternity? If you want more on it, either check back to see when "Hearing is good. Understanding is better. Action is needed!" is published - or better yet subscribe to the site and get email notifications of new items.

As a Christian, eternity means eternity, right? That's what I remember hearing. But apparently, not everyone agrees with that. I looked up the Hebrew word we read as eternity to see what it meant in a Jewish context. After all, everything in what we Christians call the Old Testament is Jewish Scripture, meant for Jewish people.

Here's what I found:

11b. God made humans desire eternity or made us imagine that we will live forever (Ibn Ezra). Nowhere else, however, does ha-ʿolam (“world, aeon, forever”) mean “eternity.” Others understand ha-ʿolam to mean “the world” and take the sentence to mean that God implanted in humans a desire to possess or understand the world. (In a note, NJPS explains this to mean that God “preoccupies man with the attempt to discover the times of future events”; cf. 8:17.) Rashbam says that what God put in minds is time—that we would know that there are good times and bad times, because if all times were of only one sort, we would not see the need to repent. But these supplements are not supported by the text. In any case, desire is irrelevant to this context.  ¹Fox, M. V. (2004). Ecclesiastes (p. 23). Jewish Publication Society.

There's a very interesting statement in there. 'Nowhere else, however, does ha-ʿolam (“world, aeon, forever”) mean “eternity.”'

Doesn't that make you wonder, why do we read it as eternity?

But let's make it even more odd before answering that.

5769 עֹולָם [ʿowlam, ʿolam /o·lawm/] n m. From 5956; TWOT 1631a; GK 6409; 439 occurrences; AV translates as “ever” 272 times, “everlasting” 63 times, “old” 22 times, “perpetual” 22 times, “evermore” 15 times, “never” 13 times, “time” six times, “ancient” five times, “world” four times, “always” three times, “alway” twice, “long” twice, “more” twice, “never + 408” twice, and translated miscellaneously six times. 1 long duration, antiquity, futurity, for ever, ever, everlasting, evermore, perpetual, old, ancient, world. 1A ancient time, long time (of past). 1B (of future). 1B1 for ever, always. 1B2 continuous existence, perpetual. 1B3 everlasting, indefinite or unending future, eternity.  ²Strong, J. (1995). In Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.

That entry above says 439 occurrences. But that's based on all the variations of the Hebrew word. For the exact word, there are 29. However, not all translations have, for lack of a better word, the same translations. Let's look at some of them.

Is eternity forever?

Ecc 3:11 Translation Comparison

Version	Translation of Ecc 3:11
NIV 2010	He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Authorized Version (1873)	He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
Darby (1890)	He hath made everything beautiful in its time; also he hath set the world in their heart, so that man findeth not out from the beginning to the end the work that God doeth.
Young's Literal Translation (1898)	The whole He hath made beautiful in its season; also, that knowledge• He hath put in their heart without which man findeth not out the work that God hath done from the beginning even unto the end.
Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (1965)	He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
New Revised Standard Edition (1989)	He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
NET Bible (2005)	God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time, but he has also placed •ignorance in the human heart so that people cannot discover what God has ordained, from the beginning to the end of their lives.

As you can see, they don't all say eternity. Not even close. On top of that, some of the other 28 verses where the same Hebrew word is used, it's sometimes translated as long time, or of the age, or other not forever type words.

So why is that? Why do we seem to translate it as eternity now, but it wasn't done so much before?

Here are some thoughts on that, based on the excerpt below from Ecclesiastes: why everything matters. It's a rather long book, but worth the time it takes to read and think about. It's from Chapter 8, in a segment the author called Between Time and Eternity. The author isn't addressing whether eternity is the "right" word or not. The translation he used, and the mindset he has in the book, is that eternity is the right translation of the underlying Hebrew word.

Here's the thing about that. If we don't translate it as eternity, it completely changes things. There's such a difference between "forever" and "a long time" that it totally changes our reference points when we read it. Think about when you were young. If you are young, try to imagine the future. We used to think life was pretty much forever. But as we get older, that feeling of life will last forever changes. The idea of living this life "forever" disappears. Of course, this life isn't forever and can't be. But when we're long, that reality seems to be lost on us.

So, when we go through the excerpt below, we'll look at how the analysis of "eternity" and time changes how we view the passage in Ecclesiastes.

Here the Preacher finds himself caught between time and eternity. On the one hand, God has put eternity into our hearts. We were made to live forever (see Genesis 3: 22), and thus we have a desperate longing for never-ending life with God. Many of the Bible’s most precious promises offer us everlasting blessing. The eternal God (Psalm 90: 2) has made an “everlasting covenant” (Genesis 9: 16) to give us a kingdom that will last “forever” (2 Samuel 7: 13). He has kept these promises by giving eternal life to anyone who believes in his Son, who offered his life for our sins before rising from the grave with power over death.

What if eternity is only a long time?

If we don't believe in eternity, then what is it that God put in our hearts?

Knowledge, as Young's Literal Translation says? Of course, God does give us knowledge. But in this instance, if it is knowledge, then what does that mean for this verse? It certainly puts us in a situation where no place else in the Bible is this word translated as knowledge. "Knowledge" also doesn't seem to fit in the context of the remainder of the passage. Everything preceding it is about time.

Ignorance, as the NET Bible says? Just from the context of the verse, you can see it doesn't really work. Once again, it changes the focus.

What about "the world"? How does that fit in with eternal, knowledge, or ignorance? We'll soon see, it's all about beliefs and points of view. The world is, as the name suggests, worldly. It's easier to say what it isn't. It's not eternal. After that, it depends.

For instance, we're soon going to look at the flood. Before the flood, people lived for up to 900 years or more. Afterwards, life expectancy was lowered to about 120 years. It wasn't that long ago, life expectancy in industrial countries was quite a bit lower than that. For instance, in the U.S., in the early 1900's, it was down to somewhere in the mid 50's. These days it's up to the mid 70's. However, in many African countries, even today, life expectancy is only in the mid 50's. And then there's this tidbit on Japan: The longest average life expectancies by prefecture in Japan as of 2020 were 88.29 years for women in Okayama and 82.73 years for men in Shiga.

We can see then, someone's reference point for what constitutes "a long time" very much depends on where and when they live.

All of this has an impact on both us, as the reader of the Bible, as well as the author of the book in the Bible, and the author of any book written about the Bible.

What if eternity is forever?

Eternity, or a long time, in our hearts is one thing. But what about God's promises? For instance, the excerpt above references Ge 9:16. It's God's promise to Noah after the flood. "Everlasting", underlined, is the word we're looking at.

God’s Covenant With Noah

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Ge 9:12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”