---
title: Ecclesiastes 5
slug: kjv/ecclesiastes-5
createdAt: 2024-08-21T02:18:28.310Z
---

**1 **Keep 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. **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. **3 **For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice *is known* by multitude of words.

**4 **When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for *he hath* no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. **5 **Better *is it* that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. **6 **Suffer 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? **7 **For in the multitude of dreams and many words *there are* also *divers* vanities: but fear thou God.

**8 **If 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. **9 **Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king *himself* is served by the field.

**10 **He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this *is* also vanity. **11 **When 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? **12 **The 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.

**13 **There is a sore evil *which* I have seen under the sun, *namely*, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. **14 **But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and *there is* nothing in his hand. **15 **As 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. **16 **And 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? **17 **All his days also he eateth in darkness, and *he hath* much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.

**18 **Behold *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. **19 **Every 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. **20 **For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth *him* in the joy of his heart.