Guard your steps when you enter the house of God.
Be more ready to hear than to offer a fool’s sacrifice,
for fools know not that they do evil.
5:2
Do not be rash with your mouth, nor hasty in your heart
to utter things before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth,
therefore, let your words be few.
5:3
Dreams come from the multitude of thoughts.
A fool's speech is known by its multitude of words.
5:4
When you make a vow unto God, defer not to pay it,
for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay that which you have vowed.
5:5
It is better to not vow, than to vow and not pay.
5:6
Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin,
so that you have to tell the angel it was an error.
Why cause God to be angered by your words
and destroy the works of your hands?
5:7
The multitude of dreams and many words arise in emptiness.
Fear God.
5:8
When you see oppression of the poor, and corrupt perversion of justice
in a local province, understand that the higher officials know,
and also the higher officials over them.
5:9
The bounty of the earth profits all.
The king himself is served by the fields.
5:10
He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver,
neither shall he who loves wealth be satisfied with increase.
This also is vanity.
5:11
When goods increase, so do the numbers of those who consume them.
What benefit is there to the owner except to behold them with his eyes?
5:12
The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much.
But the over-abundance of the rich will not let him rest.
5:13
For there is a sore ill I have seen under the sun,
namely, hoarding riches harms the owner.
5:14
Moreover, those riches can perish by misfortune,
and if he has fathered a son, there is nothing left for him.
5:15
As he came forth from his mother's womb, so shall he leave,
naked as he came. Nothing of all his labors shall he take with him.
5:16
And this also is a sore ill, that in all ways as he came, so shall he go.
5:17
What profits a man for all his chasing after wind,
if all his life he eats in darkness, fear, sorrow and wrath?
5:18
Behold, I have seen that it is good and comely for one to eat and drink,
and to enjoy the good of all his labors on earth
for whatever days of his life God gives him. This is his reward.
5:19
If God gives a man riches and wealth, and the power to enjoy them –
to take his reward and rejoice in his labor – this is a gift from God.
5:20
And he shall not much consider the number of his days,
because God has given him joy in his heart.