Ecclesiastes 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Teacher gives advice about approaching God: listen more than you speak, keep your words few, and pay any vow you make rather than making excuses for it. He then turns to money and power, noting that officials are watched by higher officials, that loving silver never brings enough silver, and that wealth hoarded or lost leaves a person with nothing to carry away. He ends with what he calls good and fitting: to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in one's work during the life God gives, which he calls a person's portion and a gift from God.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • Guard your foot when you go to the house of God.
   • Drawing near to hear is better than giving the sacrifice of fools.
   • Fools do not know that they do evil.
2. 5:2
   • Do not be rash with your mouth.
   • Do not let your heart be hasty to utter anything before God.
   • God is in heaven.
   • You are on earth.
   • Therefore let your words be few.
3. 5:3
   • A dream comes through a multitude of business.
   • A fool's voice is known by a multitude of words.
4. 5:4
   • When you vow a vow to God, do not delay to pay it.
   • God has no pleasure in fools.
   • Pay what you have vowed.
5. 5:5
   • It is better not to vow than to vow and not pay.
6. 5:6
   • Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin.
   • Do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake.
   • It is unclear whether the one addressed is a human messenger or an angel.
   • God may be angry at your voice.
   • God may destroy the work of your hands.
7. 5:7
   • In a multitude of dreams and many words there are many futilities.
   • Fear God.
8. 5:8
   • If you see the oppression of the poor in a province, do not be astonished at it.
   • If you see justice and righteousness violently taken away in a province, do not be astonished at it.
   • One who is high watches over the high one.
   • There are higher ones above them.
   • It is unclear whether the higher watchers are officials or God.
9. 5:9
   • The profit of the land is for all.
   • The king is served by the field.
   • The statement about the king and the field is obscure.
10. 5:10
    • He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver.
    • He who loves abundance will not be satisfied with income.
    • This too is futility.
11. 5:11
    • When goods increase, those who eat them increase.
    • The owner gains nothing from them except looking at them with his eyes.
12. 5:12
    • The sleep of a laboring man is sweet.
    • The laboring man's sleep is sweet whether he eats little or much.
    • The abundance of the rich man does not let him sleep.
13. 5:13
    • There is a grievous evil that the speaker has seen under the sun.
    • The evil is riches kept by their owner to his own hurt.
14. 5:14
    • Those riches perish in a bad venture.
    • The man begets a son.
    • There is nothing in the son's hand.
15. 5:15
    • As a man came from his mother's womb, so he will return naked, going as he came.
    • He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry away in his hand.
16. 5:16
    • This too is a grievous evil.
    • Exactly as a man came, so he will go.
    • There is no profit for the one who labored for the wind.
17. 5:17
    • All his days he eats in darkness.
    • He has much sorrow.
    • He has sickness and anger.
18. 5:18
    • The speaker declares what he has seen.
    • It is good and fitting for a person to eat and to drink.
    • It is good and fitting for a person to enjoy the good of all his labor that he does under the sun.
    • This applies to all the days of his life that God gives him.
    • That enjoyment is his portion.
19. 5:19
    • God gives riches and wealth to some men.
    • God gives such a man the power to eat of his riches.
    • God gives such a man the power to take his portion.
    • God gives such a man the power to rejoice in his labor.
    • This is the gift of God.
20. 5:20
    • He will not much remember the days of his life.
    • God answers him with the joy of his heart.
    • It is unclear whether God answers him or keeps him occupied with joy.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

"The house of God" is the temple in Jerusalem, where worshipers brought animals and grain to be offered on the altar. "Watch your step" translates a Hebrew phrase literally about guarding your foot: it means going there carefully and knowing what you are doing, not walking cautiously.

5:2

In the Bible, the heart means a person's thoughts and choices, not only their feelings.

5:3

"Business" in 1611 meant being busy: all the tasks and worries crowding your mind.

5:4

A vow was a formal, binding promise made to God, usually to hand over an offering, money, or property to the temple if some request was granted. Israel's law treated an unpaid vow as a debt owed to God and required prompt payment (Deuteronomy 23:21-23), which is why delay is the issue here rather than the promise itself.

5:6

The King James "angel" translates a Hebrew word that simply means "messenger," and readers have understood it two ways: the temple official who came to collect what was promised, or a heavenly messenger keeping account. The rendering keeps the word neutral. Calling the vow "an error" means claiming it was made by mistake, a way of getting out of paying.

5:7

"Empty things" translates the Hebrew word hebel, which literally means a breath or a puff of vapor. It runs through the whole book, and it carries the sense of something insubstantial and fleeting that slips away when you try to hold it, rather than something worthless.

5:8

A province was an administrative district of a large empire, run by a stack of appointed officials. The point of the closing lines is disputed: the layers of watchers above may be read as bureaucrats each covering for the one below (so nothing gets fixed), or as a higher authority that finally sees everything. The Hebrew allows both, and the rendering leaves it open.

5:9

This is one of the most obscure sentences in the book, and translators disagree sharply. The Hebrew can mean that everyone benefits from the land's produce, that the king profits from cultivated fields, or even that the king is himself dependent on and served by the land.

5:10

Silver was money. Coins were not yet minted in this period, so payments were made in weighed amounts of silver, and "silver" is simply the ordinary word for wealth in hand.

5:11

"Saving" here means except.

5:12

"Will not suffer him to sleep" means will not let him sleep.

5:13

"Under the sun" is the book's recurring phrase for life in this world, in the ordinary course of human existence, the vantage point the writer keeps insisting he is speaking from.

5:14

In 1611, "travail" meant hard work or trouble. It has nothing to do with travel.

5:15

Inheritance passed to sons, and a man's standing depended on what he could leave them. Losing the estate before a son could inherit it meant the whole life's work ended with him.

5:16

Working for the wind is a picture of working hard for something you can never hold on to.

5:17

"He eats in the dark" is an idiom for a life lived in gloom, meals taken joylessly and alone, rather than the shared, well-lit eating that stands for a good life in the next verse.

5:18

"Comely" meant fitting or proper in 1611, not pretty. A "portion" is your share, like the food set on your plate at a meal.