| Chapter 5 |
1 |
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. |
2 |
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. |
3 |
For a dream cometh through the multitude of business, and a fool`s voice through a multitude of words. |
4 |
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. |
5 |
Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. |
6 |
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? |
7 |
For in the multitude of dreams are vanities; so with many words: but fear God. |
8 |
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. |
9 |
Moreover the earth is every way profitable: the king himself is dependent upon the field. |
10 |
He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. This also is vanity. |
11 |
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? |
12 |
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. |
13 |
There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt; |
14 |
or those riches perish by some evil circumstance, and if he have begotten a son, there is nothing in his hand. |
15 |
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. |
16 |
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? |
17 |
All his days also he eateth in darkness, and hath much vexation, and sickness, and irritation. |
18 |
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. |
19 |
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. |
20 |
For he will not much remember the days of his life, because God answereth him with the joy of his heart. |