Ecclesiastes 11 Bible study: Cast your bread on the waters

The chapter opens with commands, and each comes with a reason. "Cast your bread on the waters; for you shall find it after many days" (11:1). "Give a portion to seven, yes, even to eight; for you don’t know what evil will be on the earth" (11:2). "In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening don’t withhold your hand; for you don’t know which will prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both will be equally good" (11:6). Here is what almost everyone misses: the Preacher says you don’t know four times in 11:2-6, once in 11:2, twice in 11:5 and once in 11:6 (tap know), and in 11:2 and 11:6 it is the reason given with a command to give and to sow. Then, in 11:9, the same verb comes as a command: "but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment" (11:9).

Ecclesiastes 11:5→leads toJohn 3:8

The Preacher says, "As you don’t know what is the way of the wind, nor how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child; even so you don’t know the work of God who does all" (Ecclesiastes 11:5). Nicodemus, "a ruler of the Jews" (John 3:1), came to Jesus by night (John 3:2), and Jesus answered him, "unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom" (John 3:3). Nicodemus asked, "How can a man be born when he is old?" (John 3:4). Jesus answered, "The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). Jesus doesn't cite Ecclesiastes, so setting the two together is a reading. It rests on more than the shared English word wind: in both, not knowing the wind's way is set beside how a life comes to be, in Ecclesiastes 11:5 a child's bones growing in the womb, in John 3:8 everyone born of the Spirit. They speak of different things. Ecclesiastes 11:5 goes on to "the work of God who does all" (Ecclesiastes 11:5), and John 3:8 speaks of being born of the Spirit; this line doesn't make Ecclesiastes 11:5 about being born anew or about the Spirit. One reading sets the two side by side for the picture they share: the wind whose way you don't know, beside a life coming to be. Another reads Ecclesiastes 11:5 on its own, of what can't be known of God's work, with nothing said of Jesus, and hears John 3:8 as Jesus' own teaching on being born of the Spirit, with no look back to Ecclesiastes.

יָדַעyada'say ya-DA

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "know, learn to know". Strong's: "to know (properly, to ascertain by seeing)". Chapter 11 has it five times. Four times it is you don’t know: "for you don’t know what evil will be on the earth" (11:2), "As you don’t know what is the way of the wind" (11:5), "even so you don’t know the work of God who does all" (11:5), and "for you don’t know which will prosper" (11:6). The fifth time it is a command: "but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment" (11:9). Ecclesiastes has the verb 36 times. The Preacher has said something like it of man before: "For he doesn’t know that which will be" (8:7).