Cast your bread upon the waters (11:1). There is debate about the meaning of this injunction. In context, it appears to encourage trade and commerce: One should diversify the investment in seven or eight directions (v. 2) in the certainty that eventually one’s investments will come back (v. 1). Akkadian texts on beer-making, however, have prompted the suggestion that Ecclesiastes 11:1 actually refers to brewing practices. These texts indicate that dates and a type of bread were “thrown” into the “water” during the process of mixing ingredients for beer.39 In this interpretation, “you will find it again” (v. 1) would mean that the bread will come back to you as beer, and “give portions to seven” (v. 2) would mean that you should share the beer with others so that in lean times the others will reciprocate. Still others argue that 11:1 refers to charitable giving and point to similar language in the Instruction of Ankhsheshonq, an Egyptian wisdom text from between the third and first centuries B.C.: “Do a good deed and throw it in the water; when it dries you will find it.”40
For all this, the actual context of 11:1 strongly suggests that it is concerned with trade rather than either beer-making or charity. The parallels to the Akkadian texts are probably coincidental. Some suggest that Ecclesiastes is borrowing from Ankhsheshonq, but if anything it is likely to be the other way around. It is more probable that literary dependence goes from the more enigmatic and metaphorical “throw bread upon the waters” to the more prosaic version of Ankhsheshonq than in the reverse direction.