Charles Ellicott Commentary Ecclesiastes 11

In this section, the preacher is drawing to a close, and he brings out practical lessons very different from those which views of life like his have suggested to others. From the uncertainty of the results of human effort, he infers that we ought more diligently to try various forms of exertion, so that one or another may succeed. From the instability of human happiness, he draws the lesson that we ought to enjoy freely such happiness as life offers, yet with a temperate and chastened joy, and mindful of the account we will have to give.

The most popular explanation of Ecclesiastes 11:1 is that the figure is taken from the casting of seed on irrigated lands, for instance, in Egypt before the waters of the Nile have subsided, and that the duty of beneficence is taught here. We are to sow our benefits broadcast and be assured we will have a harvest of reward. It is easier to raise objections to this interpretation than to improve on it. The word translated “bread” is sometimes used in the sense of seed corn (Isaiah 30:23; Psalms 104:14). It is objected that the words “cast on the waters” are, literally, “send over the face of the waters,” as the word “send” is nowhere else used in the sense of sowing.

It has been remarked that in the East, bread is used in the shape of light cakes that would float on water, and the text has been understood as directing the casting of such cakes into a running stream—an irrational proceeding, not likely to occur to anyone except someone to whom this text might have suggested it, and not offering grounds for expectation that the one who cast his bread in this manner would find it again. It has been less absurdly proposed to understand the text as advising maritime enterprise, but the word “bread” does not harmonize with this explanation.

There is nothing else in the book consistent with such advice, and the next verse, about the evil that shall be upon the earth, shows that the writer was not thinking of the dangers of the sea. I believe, therefore, that Ecclesiastes 11:6, which speaks distinctly of the sowing of seed, is the best commentary on the present verse, which means: cast your seed, even though you cannot see where it will fall. Possibly, the application of the figure is not to be restricted to acts of beneficence, but the next verse may lead us to think that these are primarily intended, and the encouragement at the end of the verse applies especially to these, for in other cases this book gives a less cheerful view of the possible success of human plans.

To seven, and also to eight. —Quite similar forms of expression occur in Job 5:19; Proverbs 30:21; Amos 1:3; Micah 5:4. The numbers seven and eight are used indefinitely in the advice to multiply our modes of exertion, ignorant as we are which may miscarry.

The world is ruled by fixed laws, the operation of which humans have no power to suspend.

But it is futile to try to guard against all possibilities of failure. To demand a certainty of success before acting would mean not to act at all.

The wording of this passage leaves it ambiguous whether we have here two illustrations of man’s ignorance, or only one; whether we are to understand the verse as declaring that we know neither the way of the wind nor the growth of the embryo, or whether, retaining the translation “spirit,” we take the whole verse as relating to the latter subject. (Compare to John 3:6.) The word for “her that is with child” occurs in that sense here only in the Old Testament, and in later Hebrew.