Ecclesiastes 5King James Version
Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver. The sleep of a labouring man is sweet. Riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.
Practical wisdom for approaching God: go to listen, not to perform. Let your words be few, because God is in heaven and you are on earth. If you make a vow, pay it immediately. Then Qoheleth turns to wealth: the silver-lover is never satisfied, riches kept to the owner's hurt, and the man who worked all his life may leave nothing to his heir. The conclusion is to eat, drink, and enjoy your work as a gift from God.
Before God, fewer words and greater honesty. In the world, wealth is a trap that promises more than it delivers, and the capacity to enjoy what you have is itself a gift.
2: "Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few." The most direct instruction in the book, and one of the most quoted verses in any tradition of contemplative prayer.
The Jerusalem temple is in the background: going to the house of God, making vows, bringing sacrifices. Qoheleth has seen enough religious performance to know what it looks like from the outside, and he does not recommend it. The wealthy man's portrait in the second half reads like a case study from any city in any century.
Qoheleth, now speaking more directly to the reader, shifting from observation to counsel. God appears as the one in heaven before whom economy of speech is appropriate. The anonymous wealthy man, who accumulates until the riches turn on him.
The instruction about few words before God runs against every tradition of elaborate liturgy and also against every anxiety-driven prayer life. It is counterintuitive and bracing. The wealth section is a precise anatomy of how prosperity becomes a curse rather than a blessing.
For when your prayers feel performative and you are not sure anyone is listening, or when the things you worked for feel like they are working against you. This chapter offers both a reset and a permission to stop accumulating.
1Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.
2Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.
3For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.
4When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.
5Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
6Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?
7For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.
8If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.
9Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.
10He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.
11When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?
12The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.
13There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.
14But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand.
15As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.
16And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?
17All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.
18Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.
19Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.
20For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.