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Biblion Bible Commentary

Read the introduction to Ecclesiastes · About this commentary

Let Your Words Be Few

Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

1 Guard 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. · WEB

Every instruction in the book's only passage on worship restrains the mouth, and the one positive command is to fear God.

The book turns to the sanctuary once, and what it says there is almost entirely about speech.

Verse 1 sets the posture before the subject: guard your steps when you go to God's house. Attention is required at the door. And the comparison that follows makes listening the higher act — to draw near to listen is better than to give the sacrifice of fools — with the fools distinguished not by disbelief but by ignorance: they don't know that they do evil.

Verse 2 gives the reason for brevity, and it is spatial rather than moral: God is in heaven, and you on earth. Not that God dislikes words, but that the distance should be audible in how many are used. Therefore let your words be few.

Verse 3 compares a fool's speech to a dream crowded with cares — both are produced by volume and neither means anything.

Then vows, in verses 4 and 5, and the counsel is severe about the ordinary practice of promising under pressure. When you vow a vow to God, don't defer to pay it. And then a sentence that removes the escape route: it is better that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay. Silence is permitted; an unpaid promise is not.

Verse 6 closes off the excuse — don't protest before the messenger that this was a mistake — and calling it accidental is exactly what the verse anticipates.

And verse 7, after six verses of restraint, supplies the one thing the reader is told to do: you must fear God. It is the first time the book commands it directly, and it will be commanded once more, in the last three verses Ecclesiastes 12:13. Everything between the two is what the fear looks like in practice.

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