Ecclesiastes 11:1-8

Invest in Life

1 Send your bread on the surface of the waters, for after many days you may find it.

2 Give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you don't know what disaster may happen on earth.

3 If the clouds are full, they will pour out rain on the earth; whether a tree falls to the south or the north, the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.

4 One who watches the wind will not sow, and the one who looks at the clouds will not reap.

5 Just as you don't know the path of the wind, or how bones [develop] in^[a] the womb of a pregnant woman, so you don't know the work of God who makes everything.^[b]

6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hand rest, because you don't know which will succeed, whether one or the other, or if both of them will be equally good.

7 Light is sweet, and it is pleasing for the eyes to see the sun.

8 For if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, since they will be many. All that comes is futile.

Ecclesiastes 11:1-8 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 know how the life-breath comes to the bones in
• [b] Jb 10:10-11; Ps 139:14-16; Jn 3:6-8