Original Meaning

QOHELET’S ADVICE ON living wisely continues, although it is now more generalized and not focused so specifically on the business of bad government and how to survive it. It is, rather, life in its broader scope that appears as the challenge to be met in chapter 11, although there are backward glances to 10:16–20 in the advice given about what to do with “bread” (11:1; cf. 10:19) and about diligence in work (11:6; cf. 10:18).

The opening verses (vv. 1–6) remind the reader of our human inability to control “the times,” emphasizing the lack of knowledge (Heb. ydʿ, vv. 2, 5, 6) that mortals possess. (1) None of us knows “what disaster may come upon the land” (v. 2; lit., “what evil may be upon the earth/land”). Bad times as well as good lie ahead for each of us (cf. 7:14).

(2) As both the movements of the wind and the formation of the body in the womb are deeply mysterious (v. 5),1 so too is the work of God, who made “all things” (hakkol, which can also be translated “both of them”; cf. 2:14; 7:15, 18; 10:19). None of us “understands” (ydʿ, v. 5b) what God does in his world, and none of us has any control over it. When “clouds are full of water” (v. 3), rain inevitably falls; there is nothing that the farmer can do about it. Nor does anyone have control over whether trees, wherever they may be,2 fall over when the wind blows. Whether such events are predictable or unpredictable, in other words, the point is that mortal beings cannot control them.

(3) Nor is anyone of us able to predict (“know,” v. 6) which of all our various projects and activities (our work) will be successful. We dwell in significant ignorance about what is and will be happening in the world.

In the light of all that we do not know, Qohelet offers his advice. In the midst of uncertainty, but in the expectation sooner or later of trouble, various kinds of actions are to be considered wise. Verse 1 counsels long-term investments: “bread” sent out (rather than NIV’s “cast”) like a ship on an ocean voyage, apparently wastefully in the short term, but surprisingly floating back to the thrower when the storm is over.

Verse 2 advises distribution of risk, so that when disaster strikes we are not found with all our eggs in one basket (to mention a modern, rather than a biblical, proverb). There has been much discussion among commentators about the precise meaning of this advice. Is it directed at business people, perhaps suggesting that they engage in sea-trade, but using several boats? Is it exhorting everyone to generosity and almsgiving, assuring them of help in the future when they find themselves in difficulty? Most likely the advice given here does not have one precise meaning. Instead, Qohelet is inviting his readers to embrace a certain way of looking at the world. They are to take a long-term view of life, which accepts the good with the bad; they are to sit loose to their lives and their possessions, not becoming too attached to them. Certainly such a view of life should affect both business practice and everyday relationships, but it is far from clear that the latter are the primary focus of Qohelet’s concern at this point.

What these same readers should not do is described in verse 4. They should not try to “beat the system,” attempting to find some patterns in the complex combination of predictable and unpredictable events that will enable them to manipulate reality to their own ends and profit. Again, the imagery is drawn from farming, though farming is not likely primarily in view. The danger faced is that in the end people will neither “sow” nor “reap” in life because they are waiting for a more propitious time in which to begin, thinking that they can control the outcome. Qohelet’s view throughout the book, by contrast, is that life should be embraced for what it is, good and bad, and that people should give up the pursuit of “profit” from their toil, understanding that living life fully is its own reward.

Thus, in verse 6 Qohelet advocates a course of action opposite to that described in verse 4. Given that reality is the way it is, the wise course of action is not to refrain from sowing and reaping but to engage vigorously and continuously in these activities, knowing that some projects will succeed and some will fail. It is a recapitulation of 9:10: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” He is exhorting his readers not to give in either to the fear of failure or to the false promise of godlike success. At the same time, it is in its own way a call for distribution of risk (as in 11:2). The person who knows he or she does not control destiny, yet launches into life with enthusiastic abandon, will know at least some reward. But the person who thinks it may be possible to control one’s destiny and seeks somehow to avoid the risk inherent in living cannot know any reward.

It is the theme of living life to the full while not being unaware of the darker side of things that is taken up in verses 7–8. There is no reason to think that one cannot “enjoy” (śmḥ, v. 8) life under the sun. Yet all will not always be sweetness and light. It should never be forgotten that there will be dark days as well. Although the darkness referred to here may include those dark days of life that represent the invasion of death into the realm of life (cf. 5:17; 12:2), the primary reference is to death itself (since the light with which darkness is contrasted refers to life “under the sun”), which stretches away eternally in the future.

This advice is broadly similar to that in 9:7–10: Live life in the context of the reality of death. If the Hebrew word hebel refers to futility, as the NIV suggests, then it is likely a reference here to the futility that awaits us in death. Yet in 9:7–10 the focus is much more likely the brevity of the life to be enjoyed, as is also the case with hebel in 11:10 (see below). The contrast here in 11:7–8, then, between the days of life that are brief and the days of death that are many likewise suggests that we should understand verse 8 in the following way: “Let him bear in mind the days of darkness, for they will be many; [by contrast] all the days to come [in life] will be brief.”

Bridging Contexts

IT IS AS TRUE for the Christian as for the pre-Christian reader of Ecclesiastes that none of us understands what God does in his world and none of us has any control over it. We still dwell in significant ignorance about what is and will be happening in the world. If there is a difference between Qohelet’s frame of reference and ours, it lies in what counts as the “long-term view of life” of which he speaks and in the context of which we are counseled to sit loose to our lives and possessions and to live life exuberantly and to the full. Christians have a clearer idea than is ever expressed by Qohelet of what happens beyond death and of what difference this makes to how one views life.

The specific advice about sitting loose to life and possessions and living life to the full is paralleled on many occasions in the New Testament. Jesus counsels his followers not to store up treasures on earth, where they will eventually be lost, but to think in the long term and invest in heaven (Matt. 6:19–21). He illustrates the folly of hoarding possessions out of self-interest in the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:16–21, going on to advocate a carefree attitude to life in the context of real faith in God and a generosity toward the poor (12:21–34). He teaches us not to try to hold on to life but rather to give it away:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. (Luke 9:23–24)

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24–25)

Jesus is particularly opposed to defensive living, as the parable of the talents reveals (Matt. 25:14–30). The two servants who are entrusted with money and use it to make yet more are commended, but the servant who buries it in the ground is not (vv. 24–26):

“I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.”

His master replied, “You wicked, lazy servant!”

The parable is not really about money, of course, but about the life that we are gifted by God in Christ. The wicked servant, suspicious and distrusting of his master, refuses to live out this life and have it bear fruit. He essentially refuses to “sow and reap” (Eccl. 11:6) because he has capitulated to the lie of the serpent in the garden (Gen. 3:1–5) that God is a “hard man” who harvests where he has not sown and gathers where he has not scattered seed—and even then the servant does not live consistently with that mistaken belief.

The faithful response to divine generosity is generous and exuberant living, in the awareness that Jesus came to give us life “to the full” (John 10:10)—an eternal life that begins in the present (John 5:24). Enjoying this life before and with God, we see everything else from this perspective, behaving as the wise rather than the foolish. The immediately preceding parable in Matthew 25, in fact, develops this very theme of wisdom and foolishness in the context of having a long-term view of life that is taken seriously. The wise virgins are so committed to the project of welcoming the bridegroom (25:1–13) that they ensure a ready supply of oil for their lamps. The foolish virgins have not seriously planned for the event, and they are caught unprepared.

There is never a more propitious time—such as some time in the future—to begin living. Life is to be lived now, and it is to be lived unto God, the generous Giver. “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously” (2 Cor. 9:6).

Contemporary Significance

Man as we know him is a poor creature, but he is half-way between an ape and a god, and he is travelling in the right direction.3

Modern people tend to view the movement of history, as far as human beings are concerned, as being from primeval swamp to divinity. The beginning was unpromising, but quite against expectation the forces of evolution have propelled us along, to a point where we stand on the verge of greatness. We have already overcome so many of the limitations of human life as it was experienced by most of our predecessors. Control of life itself, it seems, is now within our grasp, as we come into possession of the mysteries of DNA and pronounce ourselves capable of manipulating genetic codes so as to bring in utopia—the land of ultimate consumer choices (which hair or skin color do you prefer in your baby? which gender?), freedom from illness and deformity, and happiness for everyone. We look forward to a fresh millennium of endless opportunity.

The Bible presents us with a rather different view of history as it moves from a garden (Gen. 1–3) to a city (Rev. 21). It tells us of a promising rather than an unpromising beginning, as human beings knew and revered their Creator. It replaces the myth of endless rising up toward divinity with the harsh fact of fallenness, as the mortal seeking of immortality brings with it alienation and wickedness. It knows of technological progress but also knows that it can coexist with barbarism. Whereas those who tell the first story look ahead to boundless possibilities stretching into the future, the Bible knows of a sudden ending to everything, as God’s sovereignty over his universe is displayed in an ultimate way. Here is the reality that must be juxtaposed with our modern myths.

It is the reality captured many times throughout history in art, literature, and music, but it has perhaps not been better grasped, at least in the description of our present existence, than by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) in his poetic tragedy Faust. The character of Faust represents the human dilemma as we stand at a distance from God. We are created with an inherent capacity for creation and for control over nature, yet as we restlessly pursue these things apart from the worship and love of God, we inevitably destroy each other and damage both the natural world and ourselves.

At a more trivial level we may recall the episode in The Simpsons where Bart meets a self-help guru who is of the opinion that the obnoxious and out-of-control child has “fully developed ego-integrity,” because he does what he feels. As Bart tells his sister: “Lisa, today I am a god.” Societal mayhem follows. It is a telling snapshot of the therapeutic culture that treats all social evils as if they were simply problems in the individual psyche and does not even recognize evil as evil. We are, after all, far too adult at this point in our evolutionary development to believe in evil.

If we are indeed halfway between an ape and a god (“a little lower than the heavenly beings,” Ps. 8:5), the fact of the matter is that, out of relationship with the living God, we are capable of behaving vastly more badly than any ape, and we are traveling precisely nowhere. We cannot control “the times” any more than we can, as a species, control ourselves.

Faced with this awful truth, what are we to do? The wise thing to do is to adjust ourselves to reality. We are to turn to God in repentance for all our foolish vanity about ourselves and for all our mad schemes for gaining control of his universe and using it for our own selfish ends. We must learn to be content with the life God has actually given us to live, rather than pursuing the life that we imagine we might have preferred, and in our contentment learn to live each moment well and to be generous to others. The long-term view must dominate our thinking and our living and inform all our decision making—whether about personal matters, such as what to do with our possessions and investments, or about larger social issues, such as what to do about genetics. All must be judged in the light of the Truth and not in the light of self-serving myths, in the sure and certain knowledge that it is living in the context of the long term that is also best for human beings in the short term.

It is at this point that a particularly Christian repentance may well be necessary, for Christians have all too often managed to give the impression that our faith is about refusing to live a full life in the present so that we may inherit a better life in the future. We have thus seriously distorted the gospel, which is about love, joy, peace, and freedom, as much as it is about patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23). We are not called to suspend earthly life in the hope of eternal life but rather to live out eternal life as earthly life, embracing the reality of the latter as firmly and as affirmingly as God did in becoming incarnate in Jesus.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Gal. 6:9–10)