Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

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1 Put your money into trade across the ocean. After a while you will earn something from it.

2 Give shares of what you earn to a lot of people. After all, you don't know what great trouble might come on the land.

3 Clouds that are full of water pour rain down on the earth. A tree might fall to the south or the north. It will stay in the place where it falls.

4 Anyone who keeps on watching the wind won't plant seeds. Anyone who keeps looking at the clouds won't gather crops.

5 You don't know the path the wind takes. You don't know how a baby is made inside its mother. So you can't understand how God works either. He made everything.

6 In the morning plant your seeds. In the evening keep your hands busy. You don't know what will succeed. It may be one or the other. Or both might do equally well.

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Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO ECCLESIASTES 11

This chapter begins with an exhortation to liberality to the poor, enforced by several reasons and arguments, and the objections to it removed; and the whole illustrated by various similes, Ec 11:1-6; and then it is observed, that a life attended with outward prosperity and inward peace, and spent in doing good, is very delightful, and very desirable it is to have it continued; yet it should be remembered this will not be always, that many days of darkness in the grave will come; and after all the whole of a man's life is vanity, as is often inculcated, Ec 11:7,8; and the chapter is closed with an ironic address to young men, designed to show them the folly and danger of sinful courses, to reform them from them, and to put them in mind of a future judgment, Ec 11:9,10.

Taken from John Gill's Exposition of the Bible

Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

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Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO ECCLESIASTES 11