A remote or unbounded stretch of TIME — 'forever', 'of old', 'the age'; in later Hebrew it drifts toward THE WORLD (the sense modern Hebrew keeps). ⚠ Ecclesiastes 3:11 is the crux: 'he has put ha-OLAM in their heart' is read as ETERNITY (ASV, TNM; NWT's 'time indefinite') or as THE WORLD (KJV, RV). And repointed, the same consonants give he'elem, from alam, TO CONCEAL — 'he has put hiddenness in their heart', which no version on the shelf prints and which alone makes the two halves of the verse agree, since it continues 'yet without man's ever finding out the work God has done'. → first discussed at Ecclesiastes 3:11