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.  

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  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.  

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

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  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.  

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

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  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?  

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

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  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.  

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

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

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  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?  

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  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.  

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

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

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  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.  

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  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?  

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

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  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.  

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  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.  

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

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