Ecclesiastes 11:1-7

1 Send your grain across the seas, and in time, profits will flow back to you.

2 But divide your investments among many places, for you do not know what risks might lie ahead.

3 When clouds are heavy, the rains come down. Whether a tree falls north or south, it stays where it falls.

4 Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest.

5 Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.

6 Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another—or maybe both.

7 Light is sweet; how pleasant to see a new day dawning.

Ecclesiastes 11:1-7 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.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or Give generously, / for your gifts will return to you later. Hebrew reads Throw your bread on the waters, / for after many days you will find it again.
• [b]. Hebrew among seven or even eight.
• [c]. Some manuscripts read Just as you cannot understand how breath comes to a tiny baby in its mother’s womb.