Catholic Commentary
Wickedness in the Place of Justice and the Coming Divine Judgment
16Moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, that wickedness was there.17I said in my heart, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.”
Ecclesiastes 3:16–17 describes the Preacher's observation that wickedness corrupts both the institutions and standards of justice in the visible world. He responds by asserting an interior conviction that God will ultimately judge the righteous and wicked at an appointed time beyond human perception.
The institutions built to deliver justice are themselves corrupted by wickedness—and yet God has appointed a definitive moment when He will judge both the righteous and the wicked.
The closing clause — "for there is a time there ('ēt šām) for every purpose and for every work" — is dense and much debated. The word šām ("there") likely refers not to a earthly place but to a realm or moment determined by God — the appointed time of reckoning beyond the visible horizon. This connects to Qohelet's famous poem on time in 3:1–8, but now with a crucial addition: it is not merely that there is a season for everything, but that God has reserved a particular, definitive moment for the settling of all moral accounts. The purposiveness implicit in ḥēpeṣ ("purpose," or "delight, intention") suggests that history is not cyclical futility but has a telos governed by the divine will.
Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage by holding together what secular interpretations are tempted to separate: the honest recognition of structural injustice and the unshakeable certainty of eschatological judgment.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the last judgment will reveal even to its furthest consequences the good each person has done or failed to do during his earthly life" (CCC §1039), and that God's justice is the remedy for precisely the kind of institutional corruption Qohelet witnesses: "The Last Judgment will come when Christ returns in glory. Only the Father knows the day and the hour; only he determines the moment of its coming" (CCC §1040). Qohelet's conviction in verse 17 is thus a pre-Christian anticipation of the eschatological faith the Church professes in the Creed.
St. Gregory the Great, in his Moralia in Job, frequently draws on the witness of the Old Testament sages to illustrate that patient endurance of earthly injustice is not passivity but theological confidence — the soul rests in the certainty that God's delayed judgment is not absence but appointed timing, aligned with divine wisdom rather than human impatience.
St. Augustine (City of God, Book XIX) observed that the earthly city is constitutively incapable of achieving perfect justice because it is ordered by disordered loves — amor sui rather than amor Dei. Ecclesiastes 3:16 is the empirical data point; Augustine's theology of the two cities is the structural explanation. Perfect justice belongs to the City of God alone.
The Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes §29) echoes this passage when it acknowledges that human institutions fail to achieve the equality and justice they profess, and calls Catholics not to despair but to work for reform while awaiting the Kingdom's fullness. The tension between moral engagement and eschatological hope — the exact tension of verses 16–17 — is the heartbeat of Catholic social teaching.
Contemporary Catholics encounter Qohelet's observation daily: a courtroom that acquits the powerful and condemns the poor; a workplace where dishonesty is rewarded and integrity sidelined; a Church institution that fails to live its own proclaimed standards of righteousness. The temptation in each case is either cynical withdrawal ("nothing changes") or furious despair ("God is absent").
Verse 17 offers a third way, which is neither passive nor despairing: the interior act — "I said in my heart" — of deliberately anchoring oneself in divine judgment. This is not wishful thinking. It is the theological practice of what the Tradition calls spes (hope), which CCC §1817 defines as "the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises." For the Catholic activist working against unjust systems, this verse is both a summons to courage and a release from the burden of having to fix everything alone. For the Catholic who has personally suffered injustice — perhaps in a family dispute, a legal wrong, or an ecclesiastical process — it is the foundation of interior peace: God sees, God remembers, and God has appointed a time. Act justly now; trust God with the final reckoning.
Commentary
Ecclesiastes 3:16 — The Corruption of Justice's Own Seat
The phrase "under the sun" is Qohelet's signature marker for the empirical, observable world — what can be seen from within the horizon of human experience without the aid of direct divine revelation. His claim is shockingly specific: he does not say merely that injustice exists somewhere in society, but that wickedness occupies "the place of justice" (mĕqôm hammišpāṭ) and "the place of righteousness" (mĕqôm haṣṣedeq). These are institutional terms. Mišpāṭ denotes the formal juridical process — the court, the tribunal, the seat of legal adjudication — while ṣedeq names the moral norm those institutions are meant to embody. The deliberate doubling is not mere repetition for emphasis; it is a two-stage indictment. First, the process of justice is corrupted; second, the very standard of rightness is displaced. Evil does not lurk at the margins — it has taken up residence at the center. For the ancient Israelite reader, this was not abstract: corrupt judges, bribed elders at the city gate, and rulers who acquitted the guilty for payment were real and recurring crises (cf. Amos 5:7; Isa 1:21–23; Mic 3:9–11). Qohelet observes this not as a political commentator but as a wisdom teacher assessing whether the world makes rational and moral sense. His conclusion — at least provisionally — is that from a purely immanent vantage point, it does not.
The Spiritual Sense of Verse 16
Typologically, the corruption of earthly courts foreshadows the ultimate perversion of justice in the trial of Christ — the sinless one condemned before the very tribunals entrusted with righteousness (cf. John 18:28–19:16). The Fathers, including St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on John, 83), see the Passion as the supreme expression of worldly injustice, against which the justice of God is revealed in the Resurrection. The "place of justice" that has become a seat of wickedness is healed eschatologically when Christ, who was unjustly condemned, becomes the just Judge at the end of time.
Ecclesiastes 3:17 — The Interior Turn to Divine Judgment
Qohelet's response is remarkable for its structure: "I said in my heart ('āmartî bĕlibbî)." This is the deliberate act of interior reasoning — not blind resignation, not despair, but a considered theological judgment arrived at through reflection. The affirmation "God will judge the righteous and the wicked" ('et-haṣṣaddîq wĕ'et-hārāšā' yišpōṭ hā'ĕlōhîm) does not describe a past event or a present reality visible "under the sun," but a future divine act. This is significant: Qohelet implicitly acknowledges that what he sees empirically is not the final word. The use of (the generic term for God, emphasizing divine sovereignty and universality, rather than the covenantal ) suggests that this judgment is grounded in God's very nature as the ultimate ground of being and order, not merely in a particular covenantal promise.