Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

Living in the Light of the Limits of Human Knowledge

1 Send out your bread on the water, for in many days you will find it.

2 Divide your share in seven or in eight, for you do not know what disaster will happen on the earth.

3 When the clouds are full, they empty rain on the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or whether it falls to the north, the place where the tree falls--there it will be.

4 Whoever watches the wind will not sow; whoever watches the clouds will not reap.

5 Just as you do not know how the path of the wind [goes], nor how the bones [of a fetus] form in a mother's womb, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

6 Sow your seed in the morning, and do not let your hands rest in the evening, for you do not know what will prosper-- whether this or that, or whether both of them alike will succeed.

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.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or "the breath"