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Ecclesiastes 11 · a question people ask

"Cast your bread on the waters" (11:1). What does it mean?

In the text

The verse gives a command and a reason: "Cast your bread on the waters; for you shall find it after many days" (11:1). The next verse has the same shape: "Give a portion to seven, yes, even to eight; for you don’t know what evil will be on the earth" (11:2) (tap portion). The chapter doesn't say what the bread on the waters stands for, or who the seven and the eight are, and people read the pictures in more than one way. These notes don't add a meaning the verses don't give, and they apply it to no one's money or giving. What the verses do say is where their reasons look: the first to finding it again "after many days" (11:1), the second to not knowing "what evil will be on the earth" (11:2). In Hebrew Cast is shalach, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "send"; this is the verb's only use in Ecclesiastes.

The verses

“Cast your bread on the waters; for you shall find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, yes, even to eight; for you don’t know what evil will be on the earth.”
Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Ecclesiastes 11

Ecclesiastes 11: Cast your bread on the waters

Four times in 11:2-6 the Preacher says "you don’t know", and still he says, "In the morning sow your seed" (11:6). Then he tells the young man what to know: "know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment" (11:9).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions