Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 vs. “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)”

The Byrds · checked 2026-08-21

What we checked

PassageEcclesiastes 3:1-8 chapter ↗

Translation shownKJV (public domain) · fixed (the finding depends on this wording)

Presents itself asquotation

Categoryadditions / omissions

AlbumTurn! Turn! Turn! · 1965

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful

✗Translation named

✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Almost every sung word is Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 itself, in King James wording, with the pairs carried whole rather than paraphrased into something looser
The chapter's governing verse is the chorus, so the frame the Preacher sets over the whole list is the part that repeats most
The source is not hidden. The record's credit and the published editions checked here name the Book of Ecclesiastes outright
The one added line is in a plainly modern first-person voice, which makes it easier to hear as the songwriter's than a line written to sound scriptural would be

⚠ Cautions

The pairs are sung in a different order from the chapter's, and nothing in the song signals that the order changed
The closing line is the songwriter's own, not Ecclesiastes, and it arrives with no seam at the end of the borrowed list
No translation is named on the record or on the published editions checked here, so the King James (KJV) wording has to be recognised rather than verified
Verses 1 to 8 set war and peace side by side as appointed times and attach no plea to either. The song's ending presses for one of them
The sung passage never names God. On its own it teaches that the seasons are appointed without saying who appoints them. Verses 9 to 11 are where the chapter answers that

Verse Proof

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

The text in KJV (public domain)

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”

The speaker is the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, writing to anyone who will listen, after two chapters spent testing pleasure, building, and wisdom and finding each of them vapour. Chapter 3 opens with a single governing claim in verse 1: every purpose under heaven has its appointed season. Verses 2 to 8 are the evidence, fourteen paired opposites laid side by side. The list is an observation about the shape of time, not counsel about what to do, and it runs straight on into verses 9 to 11, where the Preacher asks what a worker gains from his labour and answers that God sets each thing in its season while keeping the whole of His work beyond human sight. Verses 1 to 8 never name God. War and peace close the list as the last pair, and the passage presses for neither.

WHAT THE SONG SINGS — Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 in King James wording, resequenced, with a refrain and one closing line added; no translation named

The sung words are the fourteen pairs of opposites from Ecclesiastes 3:2-8 in King James wording, with the chapter's opening verse lifted out and turned into a chorus that returns between them. The pairs do not arrive in the order the chapter gives. Between them sits a refrain of one word sung three times, which supplies the song's title and appears nowhere in the passage. After the final pair the song adds a closing line of Pete Seeger's own: a first-person plea about peace, in a voice the Preacher never uses. Seeger described his own contribution to the words as six words plus one word repeated three times.

Three things shifted, and none of them is a changed word. The chapter's opening verse was pulled out of its position and made a chorus, which hands it a weight of repetition the text does not give it. The pairs were resequenced. And a line that is not in Ecclesiastes was attached to the end of the list with no audible seam, delivered exactly as the borrowed lines are. The credit carried by the record and by published editions names the Book of Ecclesiastes. It names no translation.

~ Faithful & Labeled: The song carries Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 almost word for word in King James wording. But it re-sequences the chapter's pairs, makes verse 1 a repeated chorus, and closes with a line of the writer's own that the passage does not contain. No translation is ever named.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Almost every word is the chapter. The order, and the last line, are the songwriter's.

Why it matters

This is about as close as a number one single has come to being a chapter of the Bible, which is exactly why the small departures are worth naming instead of waving through. A list has an order, and the order is part of what a reader receives. Someone who learns Ecclesiastes 3 from this song learns the pairs in a sequence the chapter does not give, and will find the page reads strange the first time they check it. The added closing line carries weight out of proportion to its length, because it is the last thing sung and it points a balanced catalogue in one direction.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What repetition plants here is unusually close to what the chapter says. Sing it through a few times and most of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is in your memory in King James English, which is more scripture than almost anything else that has topped a chart has ever put there. Two things come with it. The pairs settle in the song's sequence rather than the chapter's, so the text will look rearranged when you go and read it. And the last line settles as the ending, so the catalogue arrives with a plea attached that the Preacher did not attach. The dwelling tag is mixed because the sung words are about human seasons for most of their length and about the singer's own hope at the close, and God is never named in them. That silence belongs to the passage, not to the song. If you want the singing to form you toward God rather than toward the list, read on to verses 9 to 11 afterward, where the chapter says whose hand the seasons are in.

Helpful comparison

Pete Seeger's own accounting is the most specific statement anyone involved ever made about how much of this song is scripture. He put his share of the words at six words plus one word repeated three times, and in 1999 he assigned 45 percent of the songwriting royalties to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, keeping 50 percent for the music and 5 percent for the words that were his. The reasoning reported at the time was that the money should go back toward the place the words came from. Whatever a reader makes of the recipient, the arithmetic is a public admission that the lyric is borrowed, and a more exact one than most songs leaning on scripture ever offer. It is still not a citation. It names no chapter and no version. It is an unusually honest measurement of the seam by the person who cut it.

Sources

The Byrds — Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season) (Audio) · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed returns author_name TheByrdsVEVO)
Wikipedia — Turn! Turn! Turn! · (Seeger wrote it in 1959; the words are taken almost verbatim from the King James text of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and appear out of the chapter's order; his additions are the repeated title refrain and a closing line; in 1999 he assigned 45 percent of songwriting royalties to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, keeping 50 percent for the music and 5 percent for the words)
Wikipedia — Turn! Turn! Turn! (album) · (The Byrds, Columbia Records, released 6 December 1965, produced by Terry Melcher; title track credited as adapted by Pete Seeger from the Book of Ecclesiastes, arranged for the band by Jim McGuinn)
Songfacts — Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season) · (source given as Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 with no translation named; Seeger improvised the melody quickly; the Limeliters recorded it in 1962 and Judy Collins in 1963; the Byrds' single reached number one)
Vanity Karma — Turn! Turn! Turn! · (independent confirmation that Seeger moved the words around, added one line of his own and the refrain, and that no translation is specified)
Haaretz — Pete Seeger's role in ending Israeli house demolitions · (the royalty share is paid to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, described by its co-founder as going to the place where the words originated)
J.W. Pepper — Turn! Turn! Turn! choral edition · (a published edition crediting the text to the Book of Ecclesiastes with no Bible translation named anywhere on the page)

Corrections

2026-09-05 The criteria grid said the text criterion failed while the badge said faithful, and the two contradicted each other on the page. The text criterion now passes. The criterion measures wording, and the entry has always said no sung word of the passage was changed. The resequencing, the repeated chorus and the added closing line are structure, and they stay recorded in the verdict, the cautions and the lesson unchanged. The tier did not move.

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