He now cites examples to prove what he has said about human affairs and human efforts. Birth, he says, has its own time, and death has its own time. And as we do not have our birth in our own hand, so we do not have our death either. Yet there is nothing that is more our own than our life and the various parts of our body—but only in the sense of use, for we have not been granted dominion over them even for a moment, and therefore it is useless for us to try to define them with laws. An infant is in the hand of God and is not born until its hour of birth comes. Women labor and are concerned about the birth of an infant, and they predict its time, but there is nothing certain about it. Nor do we die, in spite of great danger and extreme desperation, except at our appointed hour. Why then do we fear death? You cannot live any longer than the Lord has prescribed, nor die any sooner. For this is also what Job says in chapter 14:5: “The days of man are determined, and the number of his months is with Thee, and Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.”

But you say: Many people die of their own initiative and rashness, and they would otherwise have lived longer; and others have hurled themselves into death alive. Could they not have saved their lives? I reply: No, God has set this hour and even this means and kind of death. Experience teaches this also. Some men receive mortal wounds and yet are easily cured and survive, while others who are lightly wounded die nevertheless. The astrologers ascribe this to the stars, others ascribe it to fortune. But Holy Scripture attributes this to God, with whom the moments of our life and of our death are fixed, to whom it does not matter whether you perish of a large wound or of a small one, so that He may confound all the wisdom and counsel of man. To Christians this is a great comfort, so that they know that death has not been placed into the power of tyrants nor into the hands of any creature and so that they are not extremely fearful about death but die like children when it pleases God. Therefore what has been said about the time of being born and of dying should be said about all the other works of man, as now follows:  (Luther’s Works, v.15 p.50-51)

But you will say: How then has man been installed as the lord over things, according to Gen. 1:26,  if he cannot have dominion over them according to his own will and use them in keeping with his own desire? The answer is: We are installed as lords over things in such a way that we are able to use them for the present, but we are not able to have dominion over them by our anxiety and effort. No one is able by his effort to accomplish anything for the future. For how can someone who is uncertain about the future determine something about the future? Therefore God wants us to make use of creatures, but freely, as He has provided them, without our prescribing the time, the manner, and the hour. These are in the hand of the Lord, so that we should not think that it is in our hands to use things as we wish if He does not give them. Therefore Ecclesiasticus says (Ecclus. 15:14): “God left man in the power of his own inclination,” but He added the commandments by which man was to regulate his inclinations and actions.

“All things have their time,” that is, a definite hour.  If a man transgresses this and wants to accomplish everything by his own counsel and effort, he will have nothing from it but vanity. Many people work to get rich but gain nothing. … So also in the present passage: everything that men wish and desire. They strive for it and desire it, but they are merely undone; because they do not hit the precise hour that they have in mind, they accomplish nothing. Therefore one should commit things to God and make use of present things, refraining from a lust for future things. If you do otherwise, you will have nothing but affliction. (Luther’s Works, v.15 p.49-50)