Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

1 Invest your money in foreign trade, and one of these days you will make a profit.

2 Put your investments in several places - many places even - because you never know what kind of bad luck you are going to have in this world.

3 No matter which direction a tree falls, it will lie where it fell. When the clouds are full, it rains.

4 If you wait until the wind and the weather are just right, you will never plant anything and never harvest anything.

5 God made everything, and you can no more understand what he does than you understand how new life begins in the womb of a pregnant woman.

6 Do your planting in the morning and in the evening, too. You never know whether it will all grow well or whether one planting will do better than the other.

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.