Translation
a time to throw stones out of the way and a time to gather stones together,
Go to footnote numbera time to clasp in an embrace,
and a time to remove far
Go to footnote numberfrom an embrace,
Paraphrase
In life we can’t just do one type of action constantly, there will be times when we move things away from us, and times when we bring things together to be close to us; likewise with people, God has ordained that there will be times which are appropriate for holding someone close, and times characterized by an uncrossable distance in which it is impossible to hold them at all.
Footnotes
1
Why is this part about stones included? It is here because one of the two major themes of the book is closely related to material things. Stones were important for building projects, but they were bad if they remained in your fields. So the presence of stones was either good or bad depending on what you were trying to do. The other major theme is how death ends relationships, and that is the emphasis of the next clause.
2: “uncrossable distance”
The Hebrew word used here means “to be far away, become far away, distant, to make something be far away, to remove.” The main idea is “distance.” Many translations have changed the emphasis away from distance to one of ceasing or refraining from the action in question, in this case that of embracing. That makes it sound like the person chose to cease embracing for some reason. That is not the emphasis I see in this clause, rather it points to a distance that has come into the relationship. The text does not reveal who or what has caused that distance, but that is the emphasis. I believe Solomon did not want distance to come into his relationship with the Shulammite, but her death brought an uncrossable distance between them. He wanted to keep holding her close, but he could not have it that way indefinitely, and that is the key point of this entire section—we can’t have what we want and make it last.