¹ Keep your foot 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. ² Be not rash with your mouth, and let not your heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and you on earth: therefore let your words be few. ³ For a dream comes through the multitude of business and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words. ⁴ When you vows a vow to God, defer not to pay it; for he has no pleasure in fools: pay that which you have vowed. ⁵ Better is it that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay. ⁶ Suffer not your mouth to cause your flesh to sin; neither say you before the angel, that it was an error: why should God be angry at your voice, and destroy the work of your hands? ⁷ For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear you God. ⁸ If you see 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 regards; 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 who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver nor he who loves 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 of it, 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 sorely evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners of it to their hurt. ¹⁴ But those riches perish by evil labour: and he brought forward a son, and there is nothing in his hand. ¹⁵ As he came forward of his mother's womb, naked will he return to go as he came, and will take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand. ¹⁶ And this also is a sorely evil, that in all points as he came, so will he go: and what profit has he that has laboured for the wind? ¹⁷ All his days also he eats in darkness, and he has much sorrow and wrath with his sickness. ¹⁸ See that which I have seen: it is good and proper for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he takes under the sun all the days of his life, which God gives him: for it is his portion. ¹⁹ Every man also to who 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 labour; this is the gift of God. ²⁰ For he will not much remember the days of his life because God answers him in the joy of his heart.