expected it to make clear that peace-making is preferable to war-making. Further, Ecclesiastes doesn’t elsewhere go in for moral exhortation of the kind presupposed by this application of the poem. It’s significant that the song needs to add the exhortation to “turn.” Ecclesiastes doesn’t issue one. The context in which the poem is set underlines the point. The chapter begins with the declaration that there is a time or a moment for all the activities the poem describes, and it follows up the poem