Ecclesiastes 5

1Guard your steps when you go to God's house, and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know they do evil.

2Do not hasten with your mouth, nor let your heart rush to bring out a word before God, for God is in heaven and you on earth; therefore let your words be few.

3For a dream comes with many cares, and a fool's voice with many words.

4When you vow a vow to God, do not delay fulfilling it, for there is no delight in fools: pay what you vow.

5Better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

6Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger that it was an oversight. Why should God grow angry over your voice and ruin the work of your hands?

7For in abundant dreams and many words there are vanities, but fear God.

8If you see the needy oppressed and justice and righteousness robbed in a province, do not be astonished at the matter, for one higher than the highest keeps watch, and higher ones are over them.

9The profit of the land belongs to all; the king himself is served by the field.

10Whoever loves silver will not be satisfied with silver, nor will one who loves abundance with gain; this too is vanity.

11When goods increase, those who eat them increase; and what profit is there to its owners except beholding them with his eyes?

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

13There is a calamitous affliction I have seen under the sun: riches guarded by its owner for his misfortune.

14Those riches are destroyed through bad business, and he begets a son, and there is nothing in his hand.

15As he came naked from his mother's womb, so he returns to go just as he came, taking nothing from his labor that he might carry away in his hand.

16This also is a terrible affliction: in all respects as he came, so he goes. And what profit is there for him who labors for the wind?

17All his days he also eats in darkness, with much anger, his sickness, and wrath.

18Behold, what I have seen is good and fitting: to eat and drink and enjoy good in all his labor that he labors under the sun, for the number of days of his life that God has given him—for this is his portion.

19Every person also to whom God has given riches and wealth, and empowered him to eat of it, to receive his portion, and to rejoice in his labor—this is the gift of God.

20For he does not much remember the days of his life, because God answers him in the joy of his heart.