Ecclesiastes 11:5

As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit The Hebrew word for "spirit" has also the meaning of "wind" as in the verse immediately preceding, and this has led many commentators (as with the corresponding Greek word in John 3:8) to prefer that meaning, here. Two different examples of man's ignorance of the processes of the common phenomena of nature are adduced on this view as analogous to his ignorance of the "work of God," of what we call the Divine Government of the Universe. It may be questioned however whether, both here and in John 3:8, a more adequate meaning is not given by retaining the idea of "spirit" as the "breath of life" of Genesis 2:7. The growth of the human embryo was for the early observers of nature an impenetrable mystery (Job 10:11; Psalms 139:13-17). It became yet more mysterious when men thought of life, with all its phenomena of sensation and consciousness entering into the material structure thus "fearfully and wonderfully made." This sense of the word agrees it will be seen, with its use in chaps. Ecclesiastes 3:21; Ecclesiastes 12:7. The word "nor" has nothing answering to it in the Hebrew and the sentence should run thus, describing not two distinct phenomena but one complex fact, " as thou knowest not the way of the spirit (the breath of life) how the framework of the body (literally the bones, but the word is used commonly for the whole body as in Lamentations 4:7; Job 7:15; Proverbs 15:30; Proverbs 16:24 and elsewhere) is in the womb of her that is with child.

the works of God who maketh all So in ch. Ecclesiastes 7:13, we had "Consider the work of God." Here the addition of "who maketh all" indicates a higher stage of faith. That "never-failing Providence orders all things both in heaven and earth." The agnosticism of the Debater is, like that of Hooker (Eccl. Pol.i. 2. § 3), the utterance of a devout Theism, content to keep within the limits of the Knowable, but not placing the object of its adoration in the category of the Unknown and Unknowable.