Ecclesiastes 5
The Preacher has spent four chapters surveying everything under the sun - pleasure, labour, wisdom, time, injustice - and now he narrows in on the two places a person is most apt to deceive himself: the sanctuary and the purse. He begins at the door of worship with a startling caution: Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools (v. 1). The fool comes to God full of his own noise; the wise come ready to listen. 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 (v. 2). The distance between the Maker and the creature is reason enough to measure every word.3
From reverence the Preacher moves to the vow - the binding promise spoken to God. 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 (v. 4). A vow made in a rush of feeling is still a debt when the feeling fades, and God holds the speaker to it. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay (v. 5). The counsel is not against devotion; it is against the cheap word - the easy promise, the religious flourish, the mouth that runs ahead of the heart. Over all of it stands a single anchor that the chapter keeps returning to: fear thou God (v. 7).
Then the Preacher turns from the temple to the marketplace and names a law of the human heart that nothing under the sun can repeal: He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase (v. 10). The hunger for more is bottomless - it grows the more it is fed. The labouring man sleeps sweetly; the rich man, anxious over his pile, cannot close his eyes (v. 12). And at the last, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour (v. 15). Yet the chapter does not end in gloom. It comes to rest in a gift: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour… this is the gift of God (vv. 18-19).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Ecclesiastes 5:1-7Keep Thy Foot When Thou Goest to the House of God
1Keep 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. 2Be 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. 3For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.
The chapter opens with a warning planted in the last place we expect one - the doorway of worship: Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God (v. 1). To “keep the foot” is to watch one's step, to come with care rather than carelessly. The danger here is not the irreverence of the person who stays away; it is the self-deception of the person who comes. He can mistake the act of showing up for the substance of devotion. So the Preacher sets a single priority over all the rest: be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools. The wise come to God first as listeners. The “sacrifice of fools” is religion offered without attention - the motions made, the words said, while the heart is somewhere else - and the most damning line is what follows: they consider not that they do evil. The fool does not even know his worship has gone wrong. He thinks the offering itself settles the account, when God was asking first for an open and listening heart. The verse quietly reorders everything about approaching God: hearing before speaking, attention before performance, reverence before ritual.1
From the listening heart the Preacher moves to the governed tongue: 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 (v. 2). The reason given is not that God is uninterested but that He is God - in heaven, while we are upon earth. The sheer distance between the Maker and the creature is itself an argument for measured speech. This is not a ban on prayer; it is a caution against the kind of praying that is really performing - the heaping up of words to impress, the rash promise blurted in a moment of feeling, the religious chatter that fills silence because the heart is uneasy with stillness. Let thy words be few does not mean say little to God; it means mean what you say. And verse 3 drives it home with a homely comparison: For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words. Just as an overworked, overstuffed mind churns out restless dreams, an overstuffed mouth churns out foolishness. The sheer volume of a person's talk is no proof of wisdom; very often it is the surest sign of its absence.
4When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. 5Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. 6Suffer 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? 7For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.
The warning about hasty words now sharpens to its most serious case - the vow: 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 (v. 4). A vow is a promise spoken to God, and the law had always treated it as binding: what a person freely promised, he was bound to perform. The Preacher's concern is the gap between the promise and the payment - the vow made in a surge of emotion or crisis and then quietly let slip once the moment passes. Defer not to pay it, he says; delay is the first step toward never paying at all. Then comes a verse that cuts against every instinct toward grand religious gesture: Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay (v. 5). It is not more pious to make the big promise; it is more dangerous. The unkept vow does not impress God - it indicts the one who made it. Far better the honest silence of someone who promised nothing than the broken word of someone who promised much.3
Verse 6 names the real stakes: 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? The mouth can drag the whole person into sin - a rash word becomes a real debt, and the unpaid debt becomes guilt. The Preacher anticipates the excuse we all reach for: standing before the “angel” (likely the priest or messenger who received vows, or the heavenly witness to them), the breaker of the vow protests, it was an error - a slip, a thing not really meant. The Preacher will not allow it. To wave off a broken vow as a harmless mistake is to trifle with God, and he asks plainly why anyone would invite God's anger and see the work of thine hands undone over careless speech. Then he gathers the whole section into one anchoring command: For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God (v. 7). Strip away the churning dreams and the piles of empty words, and what remains is the one thing needful. The fear of God - reverent awe before the One who is in heaven - is the cure for both the careless tongue and the broken promise.
Ecclesiastes 5:8-12He That Loveth Silver Shall Not Be Satisfied With Silver
8If 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. 9Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field. 10He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity. 11When 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? 12The 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.
Before he turns to money itself, the Preacher steadies a reader unsettled by injustice: If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter (v. 8). Do not be thrown into shock when you see the powerful bend justice and grind the poor - it is, sadly, what fallen power does. His reason is layered: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they. The line works on two levels at once. On the lower level it describes the grim machinery of human bureaucracy - every official watched by a higher official, layer upon layer, each protecting his own and often perpetuating the very oppression rather than ending it. But the phrase reaches higher than any earthly tier: above all the watching officials is One higher than the highest, who truly regardeth. The injustice that no human court will redress is not unseen by heaven. Verse 9 adds a sober note on the whole system: the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field - even the mightiest depend, in the end, on the soil and the labourer. The exalted are not as self-sufficient as they imagine.
Now comes the chapter's most quoted line, and it lands as a law rather than a complaint: He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity (v. 10). The Preacher is not merely scolding greed; he is describing how the appetite is built. The love of money cannot be fed full, because each gain only enlarges the wanting. The man who loves silver does not reach a point where silver is enough; the having simply teaches him to want more. This is what makes the pursuit a chasing after wind - not that money is worthless, but that the love of it sets a person on a road with no destination. Verse 11 turns the knife with cold logic: 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? Greater wealth simply draws a greater crowd to consume it - more dependents, more servants, more mouths, more demands - until the rich owner's only real advantage over the poor man is the chance to look at what he owns. He cannot eat more than his fill or sleep in more than one bed. The surplus he sacrificed his life to gather feeds everyone but him.
The Preacher then sets two beds side by side, and the contrast is unforgettable: 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 (v. 12). Here is one of the truest pictures of wealth's hidden cost in all of Scripture. The man who works with his hands lies down spent and sleeps the deep, sweet sleep of honest tiredness - and his rest does not depend on how full his table was; whether he eat little or much, he sleeps. But the rich man's very abundance becomes a thief of rest. The more he has, the more there is to guard, to track, to lose; his mind will not quiet because his treasure will not stay still. The verse exposes the lie at the heart of the love of money - that more will finally bring peace. It does the opposite. The poor labourer has the one thing the anxious rich man cannot buy: a quiet mind at the end of the day. Wealth promised rest and delivered sleeplessness; the simple gift of sweet sleep was waiting all along on the other side of the ledger.3
Ecclesiastes 5:13-20Naked Shall He Return · This Is the Gift of God
13There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. 14But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and 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 of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand. 16And 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? 17All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.
The Preacher now presses the love of money to its bitter end with a case study: There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt (v. 13). Notice the irony in kept - the very hoarding meant to secure the owner is what wounds him; the wealth he clutched for safety becomes the source of his harm. And then the safety proves an illusion anyway: those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand (v. 14). A bad venture, a sudden loss, a turn of misfortune - and the pile he trusted is simply gone, leaving him with a child to provide for and empty hands to do it with. Then the Preacher lifts the case to its universal truth in a line that strips every illusion bare: 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 (v. 15). We arrive in the world with closed, empty hands, and we leave the same way. Not one coin makes the journey out. What profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind? (v. 16) - a life poured out to grasp what cannot be kept and cannot be carried. And the cost is not only at the end but all along the way: All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness (v. 17). The man enslaved to gain does not even enjoy the present; his days are shadowed, his meals joyless, his spirit eaten by worry and resentment. He loses the journey and the destination alike.
18Behold 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. 19Every 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. 20For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.
Having shown where the love of money ends, the Preacher turns, almost abruptly, to light: 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 (v. 18). After all the futility, here is something the Preacher calls good and comely - fitting, beautiful, right. And it is strikingly ordinary: to eat, to drink, to find genuine good in one's daily work. The difference between the hoarder of verse 13 and the contented person of verse 18 is not how much each owns; it is how each holds what he owns. One grasps wealth as a possession to be secured and is wounded by it; the other receives his daily bread as a portion - a measured allotment given by God - and is gladdened by it. Verse 19 makes the source unmistakable: Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof… this is the gift of God. Wealth itself is one thing; the power to enjoy it is another, and the Preacher says that capacity for enjoyment is a separate, distinct gift from God's hand. A person can have abundance and no ability to enjoy it (that was the rich man who could not sleep); another can have little and savor it deeply. The enjoyment is the gift, not merely the having. And the chapter closes on a quiet grace: he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart (v. 20). The contented person is not haunted by the brevity and trouble of his days, not because he has anesthetized himself, but because God meets him with a joy that fills the present - an answer, from God, lodged in the heart.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Ecclesiastes 5 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for neder (v. 4, the binding “vow”), for the warning against being hasty of mouth before God (v. 2), and for the difference in verse numbering between the Hebrew text and the English Bible at the chapter's opening.
- Ecclesiastes 5 ↔ Matthew 5-6 · Deuteronomy 23 · 1 Timothy 6Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Ecclesiastes 5 to the rest of Scripture - the caution about hasty words and vows (vv. 2-6) read alongside let your communication be, Yea, yea (Matt. 5:37) and the law of vows in Deuteronomy 23:21-23, and the insatiable love of silver (v. 10) read beside the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim. 6:10).
- Ecclesiastes 5 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Ecclesiastes 5 - the image of “keeping the foot” at the house of God (v. 1), the binding force of a vow and the “messenger” or angel of verse 6, the structural law of desire in verse 10, and the contrast between the labourer's sweet sleep and the rich man's sleeplessness in verse 12.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Keep Thy Foot When Thou Goest to the House of God
- Deuteronomy 23:21-23When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it... that which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform.The law behind verses 4-5 - a vow to God is binding, and delay in paying it is sin.
- Matthew 5:34-37Swear not at all... But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.The reliable plain word that makes the rash vow of verses 4-6 unnecessary.
- Matthew 6:7when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.The “let thy words be few” of verse 2 - God is not won by the multitude of words.
- James 1:19let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.The same order as verse 1 - readiness to hear set above readiness to speak.
- Psalm 66:13-14I will go into thy house with burnt offerings: I will pay thee my vows, which my lips have uttered.The kept vow the Preacher commends - promises spoken to God and then faithfully performed.
He That Loveth Silver Shall Not Be Satisfied With Silver
- 1 Timothy 6:9-10they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare... For the love of money is the root of all evil.The same diagnosis as verse 10 - not money itself, but the love of it, that ruins a person.
- Luke 12:15beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.The lie verse 10 exposes - that life is found in the abundance of possessions.
- Proverbs 23:4-5Labour not to be rich... riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.The vanity of chasing wealth (vv. 10-11) - riches that vanish even as you grasp them.
- John 6:35I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.The answer to the unsatisfied hunger of verse 10 - the bread that finally fills the soul.
- Philippians 4:11-12I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content... I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry.The contentment that breaks the cycle of verse 10 - a peace not tied to how much one has.
Naked Shall He Return · This Is the Gift of God
- 1 Timothy 6:17Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.The gift of verses 18-19 named - a God who gives richly all things to enjoy, against trust in uncertain riches.
- 1 Timothy 6:7we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.The truth of verse 15 echoed exactly - naked we came, and we carry nothing away.
- Job 1:21Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away.The same image as verse 15 - entering and leaving the world with empty hands.
- Luke 12:20Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?The sore evil of verses 13-15 in a parable - wealth hoarded and left behind at death.
- James 1:17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.The source named in verse 19 - the good of life, including the power to enjoy it, as the gift of God.