Ecclesiastes or Preacher 05 Various Practical Advice

 Ecclesiastes or Preacher 05

Various Practical Advice

1 Guard your foot when you enter the house of God, and incline your ears to hear rather than to offer the sacrifices of fools, for they do not know that they do evil.

2 Do not be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you are on earth; therefore let your words be few.

3 For dreams come from much busyness, and the voice of a fool from many words.

4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay in paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow.

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

6 Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the angel that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your voice, so as to destroy the work of your hands?

7 For as in the multitude of dreams there is vanity, so also in many words; but you fear God.

8 If you see in a province the oppression of the poor, and violence instead of justice and righteousness, do not marvel at such a thing; for He who is higher than the high ones considers this, and there are higher than they.

9 The profit of the earth is for all; even the king uses the field.

10 He who loves money will never be satisfied with money, and he who loves abundance will never be satisfied with income; this also is vanity.

11 Where wealth increases, there those who eat it increase also. What more profit do the owners have than to see it with their eyes?

12 The sleep of the laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much; but the abundance of the rich does not let him sleep. 

13 There is an evil I have seen under the sun, and it brings on sickness: riches that their owners hoard to their own detriment.

14 For riches themselves are lost by some evil venture; and if a son has one, nothing remains in his hand.

15 As he came from his mother's womb, so naked he will return, going as he came; and he will take nothing of his labor that he can carry away in his hand.

16 This also is an evil that causes sickness: that, inevitably, as he came, so he goes; and what profit is there to him from laboring for the wind?

17 And from having eaten all his days in darkness, and from having suffered much vexation, and sickness, and fierce wrath?

18 Behold, this which I have seen is good and comely: that each one should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toiled under the sun, all the days of his life which God gave him; for this is his portion.

19 And to the man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat them and to take his portion and to rejoice in his labor—this is the gift of God.

20 For he will not long remember the days of his life, because God answers him for the joy of his heart.