1. Guard your steps 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 the multitude of business; and a fool's voice by the multitude of words.
4. When you vow a vow to God, do not wait 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 allow your mouth to cause your flesh to sin; 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. For in the multitude of dreams, both words and vanities abound; but fear God.
8. If you see the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, do not marvel at the matter. For He who is higher than the highest watches; and there are some higher than they.
9. And the advantage of a land, it is for all; even a king has a field being tilled.
10. He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, and he who loves abundance not with gain. This is also vanity.
11. When the good thing increases, those who eat it increase; then what profit is it 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, namely, riches kept for their owners to their hurt.
14. But those riches perish by evil use. And he brings forth a son, and nothing is 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 may not carry anything that may go 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. Also 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 shall not much remember the days of his life, because God answers him in the joy of his heart.