1 Guard your feet when you go to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools. For they do not know that they are doing evil.

2 Do not be rash with your mouth, and do not let your heart be hasty to say a word before God. For God is in Heaven, and you are on earth; therefore let your words be few.

3 For a dream comes through much activity; and a fool’s voice by the multitude of words.

4 When you vow a vow to God, do not hesitate to pay it; for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay that which you have vowed.

5 It is better that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay.

6 Do not permit your mouth to cause your flesh to sin; do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?

7 For in the multitude of dreams and increasing of words there is also vanity; but fear God.

8 If you see the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, do not be astonished at the matter; for He who is higher than the highest watches; so there are those higher than they.

9 And the advantage of the land is for all; even a king has fields being tilled.

10 He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance, with gain. This also is vanity.

11 When the goods increase, those who eat it increase; what profit is it, then, to its owners, except to see it with their eyes?

12 The 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.

13 There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun: riches kept for their owners to their hurt.

14 But those riches perish by evil use. And he begets a son, and there is nothing in his hand.

15 As he came forth from his mother’s womb, naked he shall return, to go as he came. And from his labor he shall take away nothing that he may carry in his hand.

16 And this also is a sore evil, that in all, as he came, so shall he go; and what profit does he have who has labored for the wind?

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

18 Behold that which I have seen: It is good and right for one to eat and to drink, and to see good in all his labor that he labors under the sun all the days of his life, which God gives him; for it is his portion.

19 Also every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat of it and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.

20 For he does not excessively dwell on the days of his life, because God keeps him busy in the joy of his heart.