Ecclesiastes 5:4-17

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 inadvertence. Wherefore should God be wroth at thy voice, and destroy the work of thy hands?

⁷For in the multitude of dreams are vanities; so with many words: but fear God.

⁸If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter; for a higher than the high is watching, and there are higher than they.

⁹Moreover the earth is every way profitable: the king himself is dependent upon the field.

¹⁰He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. This also is vanity.

¹¹When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what profit is there to the owner thereof, except the beholding of them with his eyes?

¹²The sleep of the labourer is sweet, whether he have eaten little or much; but the fulness of the rich doth not suffer him to sleep.

¹³There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt;

¹⁴or those riches perish by some evil circumstance, and if he have begotten a son, there is nothing in his hand.

¹⁵As he came forth from his mother's womb, naked shall he go away again as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.

¹⁶And this also is a grievous evil, that in all points as he came so doth he go away, and what profit hath he, in having laboured for the wind?

¹⁷All his days also he eateth in darkness, and hath much vexation, and sickness, and irritation.