CHAPTER 5

¹Be not rash with your mouth, and let your heart not hurry to utter a word before God. For God is in the heavens and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. ²For a dream comes with much business and the fool’s voice with much talk. ³When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it, for there is no pleasure in fools. What you vow, fulfill. ⁴Better that you do not vow than that you vow and do not fulfill. ⁵Do not let your mouth make your body offend, nor say before God that it was a mistake. Why should God rage over your voice and ruin your handiwork? ⁶For in many dreams are mere breath and much talk. Instead, fear God. ⁷If you see the oppression of the poor and the perversion of justice and right in the province, be not amazed at the matter, for he who is high has a higher one watching him, and still higher ones over them. ⁸And the gain of the land is in everything—a king is subject to the field. ⁹He who loves money will not be sated with money, and he who loves wealth will have no crop. This, too, is mere breath. ¹⁰As bounty multiplies, those who consume it multiply, and what is the benefit for its owner except what his eyes see? ¹¹Sweet is the worker’s sleep, whether he eats little or much. And the rich man’s surfeit does not let him sleep. ¹²There is a blighting evil I have seen under the sun: wealth kept for its owner for his harm. ¹³And that wealth is lost in a bad business, and he begets a son with nothing in his hand. ¹⁴As he came out from his mother’s womb, naked will he return to go as he came, and nothing will he bear off from his toil that he brings in his hand. ¹⁵And this, too, is a blighting evil: as he came, so he goes, and what gain does he have that he should toil for the wind? ¹⁶All his days, too, he goes in darkness, with much worry and illness and rage. ¹⁷Look, I have seen what is good: it is fit to eat and to drink and enjoy good things in all his toil that he toils under the sun in the number of the days of his life that God gave him, for that is his share. ¹⁸Also the man whom God has given wealth and possessions and whom He has empowered to enjoy it and bear off his share and delight in his toil—this is God’s gift. ¹⁹For not much will he recall the days of his life, for God makes him busy with his heart’s delight.