Ecclesiastes 11:1-5

Cast Your Bread upon the Waters

1 ¹Cast your bread upon the waters, ²for you will find it after many days.

2 ³Give a portion to ⁴seven, or even to eight, ⁵for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.

3 If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.

4 He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

5 As you do not know the way ⁶the spirit comes to ⁷the bones in the womb^[a] of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

Ecclesiastes 11:1-5 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.

Cross References

• 1. [Isaiah 32:20]
• 2. [Deuteronomy 15:10; Proverbs 19:17; Matthew 10:42; Luke 14:14; 2 Corinthians 9:8; Galatians 6:9, 10; Hebrews 6:10]
• 3. [Psalms 112:9; Matthew 5:42; Luke 6:30; 1 Timothy 6:18, 19]
• 4. Micah 5:5; See Job 5:19; Proverbs 6:16
• 5. [Luke 16:9; Ephesians 5:16]
• 6. [Ecclesiastes 1:6; John 3:8]
• 7. See Psalms 139:13-16

Footnotes

• [a]. Some Hebrew manuscripts, Targum; most Hebrew manuscripts As you do not know the way of the wind, or how the bones grow in the womb