The phrase “Time to throw stones and time to collect stones” can be heard quite often, but what people mean when they say these words is not always clear. You can often find out the true meaning of a phrase by contacting the original source.
Biblical origin
Like many other winged expressions, the phrase about stones came to modern usage from the Book of Books - the Bible. In chapter 3 of the Book of Ecclesiastes we read:
"Everything has its own time, and the time of every thing under heaven: the time to be born, and the time to die; the time to plant, and the time to tear out the planted; the time to kill, and the time to heal; the time to destroy, and the time to build; the time to cry, and the time to laugh; time to complain, and time to dance; time to throw stones, and time to collect stones; time to hug, and time to evade hugs; time to look for, and time to lose; time to save, and time to toss; time to tear, and time to stitch; time to be silent, and time to talk "time to love, and time to hate; time to war, and time to peace."
From the quote it becomes clear that we are talking about the fact that everything has its own time and everything has its own time. The meaning is really deep and, like many biblical quotes, philosophical.
But nevertheless, it is not entirely clear why stones are to be scattered, so that later they can be collected. Actually, the phrase in question is only one of the types of peasant labor. The lands on which the people of Israel lived did not differ in fertility were stony, and in order to cultivate the field, it was first necessary to clean the stones. This was what the peasants did, i.e. collected stones. But they did not scatter them, but hedges for land allotments were made of them.
As is often the case with quotes from the Bible, the translator was let down by ignorance of the realities of the peasant life of Israelis, more precisely, the quote could be translated as "time to collect and time to lay stones."
And this is not surprising: the books were translated by clergymen - people far from peasant realities.
But who knows, the phrase would become so popular in this form. Most likely not, because the mysterious meaning is lost.
