Chapter 5

  Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and draw near to hear, rather than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they know not that they do evil.  

  Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in the heavens, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few.  

  For a dream cometh through the multitude of business, and a fool's voice through a multitude of words.  

  When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.  

  Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.  

  Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an inadvertence. Wherefore should God be wroth at thy voice, and destroy the work of thy hands?  

  For in the multitude of dreams are vanities; so with many words: but fear God.  

  If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter; for a higher than the high is watching, and there are higher than they.  

  Moreover the earth is every way profitable: the king [himself] is dependent upon the field.  

  He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. This also is vanity.  

  When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what profit is there to the owner thereof, except the beholding [of them] with his eyes?  

  The sleep of the labourer is sweet, whether he have eaten little or much; but the fulness of the rich doth not suffer him to sleep.  

  There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt;  

  or those riches perish by some evil circumstance, and if he have begotten a son, there is nothing in his hand.  

  As he came forth from his mother's womb, naked shall he go away again as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.  

  And this also is a grievous evil, that in all points as he came so doth he go away, and what profit hath he, in having laboured for the wind?  

  All his days also he eateth in darkness, and hath much vexation, and sickness, and irritation.  

  Behold what I have seen good and comely: [it is] to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labour wherewith [man] laboureth under the sun, all the days of his life which God hath given him: for that is his portion.  

  Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and power to eat thereof, and to take his portion and to rejoice in his labour: that is a gift of God.  

  For he will not much remember the days of his life, because God answereth [him] with the joy of his heart.