 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 is known 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 what 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 The advantage of a land, it is for all. Even a king has a field being tilled. 10 Those who love silver will not be satisfied with silver, nor those who love abundance with increase. 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 one who labors is sweet, whether one eats little or much. But the abundance of the rich will not allow them to sleep. 13 There is a grievous+ evil that I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for their owners to their hurt. 14 Those riches perish by evil use and bring forth a son with nothing in his hand. 15 As everyone comes forth from the womb naked, so will everyone return, taking nothing from one's labor that may be carried away in one's hand. 16 This also is a sad+ evil, that in all, as one came, so will one go. What profit does one have who has labored for the wind? 17 All one's days one eats in darkness and has much sorrow and wrath with sickness. 18 Behold what I have seen. It is good and right for one to eat and drink and see good in all one's labor that one labors under the sun all the days of life that God gives. For this is one's portion. 19 Everyone to whom God has given riches and wealth has the ability+ to eat of it and to take a portion and rejoice in the labor. This is the gift of God. 20 For one will not much remember the days of one's life, because God answers in the joy of one's heart.
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