Scripture Daily

Context No. 765 of 4322 · Ecclesiastes

Context · Reflection

Ecclesiastes 5:1-7: in context

1Guard your steps when you go to God’s house; for to draw near to listen is better than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they don’t know that they do evil. 2Don’t be rash with your mouth, and don’t let your heart be hasty to utter anything before God; for God is in heaven, and you on earth. Therefore let your words be few. 3For as a dream comes with a multitude of cares, so a fool’s speech with a multitude of words. 4When you vow a vow to God, don’t defer to pay it; for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay that which you vow. 5It is better that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay. 6Don’t allow your mouth to lead you into sin. Don’t protest before the messenger that this was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice, and destroy the work of your hands? 7For in the multitude of dreams there are vanities, as well as in many words; but you must fear God.

The Preacher turns, for a moment, from the vanity of life under the sun to the way a person comes before God, and his counsel is mostly about the mouth. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God, he says, and draw near to listen, rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools. The first instinct of worship, in his view, should be to listen, not to perform. Then he presses it: do not be rash with your mouth, and do not let your heart be quick to say anything before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth; therefore let your words be few. The distance between heaven and earth is reason enough to speak with restraint.

He is especially wary of big spiritual talk that outruns the follow-through. When you make a vow to God, he warns, pay it, and do not delay; God takes no pleasure in fools. Better not to vow at all than to vow and not fulfill it. Do not let your mouth run you into sin, and then stand before the messenger claiming it was a slip. It is a caution against a very common kind of religion: the impressive prayer, the grand promise, the flood of words offered up as though God were moved by volume. Come instead, he says, to listen, keep your words few, and fear God.

The Preacher says to come before God to listen, with few words, and to keep the vows I make. When I come to God, am I mostly talking and promising, or actually there to listen?

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