Ecclesiastes 5

All 20 verses in the Clear Bible Translation. Tap a verse to compare the KJV and read what it means.

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1. 1Watch your step when you go to the house of God. Be more ready to listen than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not consider that they do evil.
2. 2Do not be rash with your mouth, and do not let your heart be hasty to say anything before God. For God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.
3. 3For a dream comes through much business, and a fool's voice is known by many words.
4. 4When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed.
5. 5It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.
6. 6Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, and do not say before the angel that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?
7. 7For in many dreams and many words there are also various vanities. But fear God.
8. 8If you see the oppression of the poor and the violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, do not marvel at the matter. For he who is higher than the highest regards it, and there are higher ones than they.
9. 9Moreover, the profit of the earth is for all; the king himself is served by the field.
10. 10He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he who loves abundance with increase. This also is vanity.
11. 11When goods increase, those who eat them increase. And what good is there to the owners of them, except to see them with their eyes?
12. 12The 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. 13There is a sore evil that I have seen under the sun: riches kept by their owners to their hurt.
14. 14But those riches perish by evil travail, and he fathers a son, and there is nothing in his hand.
15. 15Just as he came from his mother's womb, naked he will return, going as he came. He will take nothing from his labor that he can carry away in his hand.
16. 16And this also is a grievous evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go. And what profit has he who has labored for the wind?
17. 17All his days also he eats in darkness, and he has much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.
18. 18Here is what I have seen: it is good and fitting for a person to eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor under the sun. This is for all the days of his life that God gives him, for it is his portion.
19. 19Also every man to whom God has given riches and wealth and has given him power to eat of them, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor — this is the gift of God.
20. 20For he shall not much remember the days of his life, because God answers him in the joy of his heart.