Ecclesiastes 5

Revised Geneva Translation

5 Do not be rash with your mouth, or let your heart be hasty to utter a thing before God. For God is in Heaven and you are on the Earth. Therefore, let your words be few.

² For as a dream comes by the multitude of business, so the voice of a fool is in the multitude of words.

³ When you have vowed a vow to God, do not delay in paying it. For He does not delight in fools. Pay what you have promised.

⁴ It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay it.

⁵ Do not allow your mouth to make your flesh sin, nor say before the Angel that this is ignorance. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?

⁶ For in the multitude of dreams and vanities are also many words. But fear God.

⁷ If in a country you see the oppression of the poor and the defrauding of judgment and justice, do not be astonished at the matter. For He who is higher than the highest watches. And there is higher than they.

⁸ And the abundance of the Earth is for all. The king also subsists on the field that is tilled.

⁹ He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver. And he who loves riches shall be without its fruit. This is also vanity.

¹⁰ When goods increase, those who consume them are increased. And what good comes to their owners, but the beholding with their eyes?

¹¹ The sleep of him who travails is sweet, whether he eats little or much. But the satiety of the rich will not allow him to sleep.

¹² There is an evil sickness that I have seen under the Sun: riches reserved to their owners for their evil.

¹³ And these riches perish by evil travail. And when he begets a son, there is nothing in his hand.

¹⁴ As he came forth from his mother’s belly, he shall return, naked, to go as he came, and shall carry away nothing from his labor which he has caused to pass by his hand.

¹⁵ And this also is an evil sickness: in all points, as he came so shall he go. And what profit does he have who has labored for the wind?

¹⁶ Also, all his days he eats in darkness with much grief, and in his sorrow and anger.

¹⁷ Behold, then, what I have seen as good: that it is comely to eat and to drink and to take pleasure in all his labor in which he labors under the Sun, the whole number of the days of his life which God gives him. For this is his portion.

¹⁸ Also, to every man to whom God has given riches and treasures, to whom He gives power to eat of it, and to take his part, and to enjoy his labor — these are the gifts of God.

¹⁹ Surely, he will not well remember the days of his life, because God answers to the joy of his heart.