Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ecclesiastes · About this commentary
Cast Your Bread on the Waters
Ecclesiastes 11:1-6
1 Cast your bread on the waters; for you shall find it after many days. · WEB
Not knowing is given four times as the reason to act, which reverses the use the book has made of it for ten chapters.
Something turns here, and it turns on a single phrase used four times in these six verses.
Until now, ignorance has produced paralysis. A man could not tell whether his heir would be wise Ecclesiastes 2:19, could not find out God's work from beginning to end Ecclesiastes 3:11, could not know what was coming Ecclesiastes 8:7, and the not-knowing was always a reason the accounts would not close.
In this passage the same ignorance becomes the argument for acting. Give a portion to seven, yes, even to eight; for you don't know what evil will be on the earth. Diversify, because the future is unreadable. You don't know what is the way of the wind, nor how the bones grow in the womb... even so you don't know the work of God. And then the conclusion: in the morning sow your seed, and in the evening don't withhold your hand; for you don't know which will prosper.
Four times, and each one attached to an imperative rather than to a complaint.
Verse 1 opens it with an image whose sense is debated in the details and clear in its direction: cast your bread on the waters; for you shall find it after many days. Whether the picture is seed broadcast on flooded ground or cargo sent out by sea, the act is a release of something valuable with no visible security and a long wait.
Verse 4 states the negative case in a single farmer: he who observes the wind won't sow; and he who regards the clouds won't reap. He is not lazy. He is watching the conditions, and the watching is what stops him — because the conditions never resolve.
And the two examples in verse 5 are chosen with care. The wind and a child's bones are both processes anyone can observe the results of and nobody can watch happening.
settled What this mark means