Vows to an Awesome God

1Guard your steps when you go 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 your mouth, and let not your heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and you upon earth: therefore let your words be few.

3For a dream comes through much business; and a fool's voice is known by a multitude of words.

4When you vow a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he has no pleasure in fools: pay that which you have vowed.

5Better is it that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay.

6Permit not your mouth to cause your flesh to sin; neither say before the angel, that it was an error: why should God be angry at your voice, and destroy the work of your hands?

7For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also many vanities: but you fear God.

The Vanity of Riches

8If you see the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of justice and righteousness in a province, marvel not at the matter: for the high official is watched by a higher one ; and there are yet higher ones over them.

9Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served from the field.

10He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loves abundance, with increase: this is also vanity.

11When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: so what good is there to the owners, except the beholding of them with their eyes?

12The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not allow him to sleep.

13There is a great evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept by their owners to their hurt.

14But those riches are lost by a bad venture: when he begets a son, 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 from his labor, which he may carry away in his hand.

16And this also is a great evil, that just as he came, so shall he go: and what profit has he who has labored for the wind?

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

18Behold that which I have seen: it is good and fitting for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he takes under the sun all the days of his life, which God gives him: for this is his lot.

19Every man also to whom God has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat of it, and to accept his lot, and to rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.

20For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart.