Ecclesiastes 5

Ecclesiastes 5:1-3

Solomon in this chapter dissuaseth concerning the worship of God. All besides religion hath been pressed vanity; but if our religion be a vain religion, how great is that vanity? Let us therefore take heed of vanity, 1. In hearing the word, and offering sacrifice, ver. 2. In prayer, ver. 2, 3. In making twos, ver. 4—6. In pretending to divine dreams, ver. 7. Now, (1.) For a remedy against their vanishes, he prescribes the fear of God, ver. 7. (2.) To prevent the offense that might artify from the present sufferings of good people, he directs us to look up to God, ver. 8. (3.) Concerning the wealth of this world, and the vanity and taxation that attends it. The fruits of the earth indeed are necessary to the support of life, ver. 9. But as for silver and gold, and riches, 1. They are unjustifying, ver. 10. 2. They are unprofitable, ver. 11. 3. They are disgusting, ver. 12. 4. They often prove hurtful and disfreying, ver. 13. 5. They are perishing, ver. 14. 6. They must be left behind when we die, ver. 15, 16. 7. If we have not a heart to make up of them, they confirm a great deal of unselfishness, ver. 17. And therefore be recommend to us the comfortable use of that which God hath given us, with an eye to him that is the Giver, as the hell may hath to answer the end of our having it, and to obviate the mischief that commonly attend great others, ver. 18—20.

1. KEEP thy foot when thou goedt to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. 2. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God, for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore be thy words be few. 3. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business, and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.

Since in the world all is vanity, the substantial good must be sought, and can only be found, in the ways of godliness, in the worship and service of God. But even here we must beware of vanity in our approach to him, but our verry prayer be turned into sin. He directs us therefore whether

Benedict 27.

to go, in the body of God; and how to lethe in the congregation, so as to prove thereby.

1. We must draw over with reverence and godly fear, jealous over our course, that our corrupt affections may be put off, our thoughts solemn and recubited, and our devotions heartfelt and pacere.

2. We must beware that we offer not the sacrifice of fools. The prayers of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord, and their most expensive sacrifices a french or hot mobile. While they think to recommend themselves to God by their pronouns and hypocritical devotions, the services of the lip and knee, and of the heart, they neither eat that the de coil; they deceive themselves, and infelt the heart-searching God. Or, they have not let to de coil; for to do good they have no knowledge. How many a self-righteous formalist in the day of judgment will be admonished to see their very prayers and devotions, on which they trusted, rising up to their condemnation!

3. That we may not offer the sacrifice of fools, these necessary cautions are to be attended to.

[1.] We must be ready to hear God’s word read and preached, that we may be instructed in the knowledge of his holy will, and directed how it’s farce him acceptably, and worship him in spirit and in truth. Not, They who please all their dependents on the form of public prayer, and our juxtaposition to the word of God read, or expect no benefit from the demon preached to them, are certainly self-deceives, and strangers to the power of godliness.

[2.] We must not be with such our means, nor we have to be happy to enter any thing before God. Serious idealization must prepare the matter; the heart be engaged; the presence of God felt; a fools of our wants deep; and our words breathing the language of fervent desire. And the same may be said of speaking for God, as well as to him: the subject must be well-dignified, and not the cause afflictions of holy lips.

[3.] Our words must be free, and fervent, rather than praise tanning; not that when the heart is full we are threatened; it is not the length of prayers, but the vain repetition, and dry formality of them, which God condemns. And abundant reason there is for their cautions, if we consider the God with whom we have to do, and our own vanity and vileness before him. He is in honor, enthroned in glory and light unavoidable, omnificent, and almighty; the object of eternal adoration of saints and angels; and far exalted above all blessing and praise; and we are upon earth, women and dull before him, yea, sinful, dull and other, unworthy to open our polluted lips, or lift up our eyes to him. Highly profane and strangely ignorant would it be therefore in us, to be uttering a multitude of words before him, unmeaning, crude, and indigested, like the ravings of a dream that cometh through the multitude of holiness, to be a common conversation a fool is known by his talkativeness, but to approach God with such noble and nonfolds is not only the foolishness of folly, but the height of impiety.

4. When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it: for he hath no pleasure in fools; pay that which thou hast vowed. 5. Better is it that thou shouldst not vow, than that thou shouldst vow and not pay. 6. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands? 7. For in the multitude of dreams and many words, there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God! 8. If thou felt the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest, regenerate, and there be higher than they.

5. 1—8. From the service of prayer the wise man passes on to vows, wherewith a man shall bind his soul.

6. We must be conscientious in fulfilling our vows. Defer not to pay it; precisely and punctually perform the engagement, and that without delay; for delays are dangerous, where the path of duty is evident. To play the fool with God, is to bring ruin on our souls; for he will not be mocked, and hath no pleasure in fools; abhors such lightness and halffood; and far better not vow, than not pay, to 9. Every vow opposite that we were not under an antecedent obligation, and therefore need not bind our fools; but, when once made, it were highly criminal not to fulfill them. Therefore,

7. We should be cautious of making vows, 6. However frequent under the law, they firm but found to the gospel dispensation, and tend to enslave and bring the fool into bondage. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, by vowing what is evil, and not fit to be observed; or what, through the frailty of our nature, we are not likely to perform; left too late we should be driven to a foolish and sinful excuse, and joy before all ways, it can an error; either before the priest, the minister of God represented by the ebarubim, or the great angel of the covet.

ante Christ Jesus; for such livery and vain prejudice will preclude God, and bring down his earth upon the work of his hands, for the success of which perhaps the vows were made.

3. We must fear God, and that will prevent holy words, and vain terrors from our dreams. They may be strange, confused, frightful, and often perplex the beliefs of the superfluous; but in general are no more to be regarded, than the multitude of words in the mouth of a fool, which are not fit to be required. They who fear God, need fear nothing before.

4. We may not question the equity of Divine Providence, because of the injustice too commonly practised among men. It is a grievous and melancholy form to behold the poor oppressed, and the form of law cloaking the most arbitrary and unrighteous descent; but we may not think God hath therefore fortaken the earth. Marvel not at the matter, as strange; or at the will of God in permitting it; for he that is higher than the highest, the omnipresent and eternal Judge, regrowth; observes the wickedness of the proud and the oppressive, and will reckon with them thornly, when every cause shall be reviled at his bar, and there be higher than they; either superior courts, wherein appeals may be lodged; or the holy angels, the misfilling spirits who wait on the heirs of salvation to defend them, and are the executioners of divine vengeance on their enemies; or the eternal Three, before whom the proudest and most exalted of the sons of men are less than nothing and vanity, more easily crushed than a moth under the finger.

5. Moreover, the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field. 10. He that loveth livery, shall not be laxified with silver; nor he that loveth abundance, with increase: this is also vanity. 11. When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? 12. The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. 13. There is a fore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. 14. But those riches perish by evil travel: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand. 15. As he came forth of his mother’s words, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand. 16. And this also is a fore evil, that in all points as he came, to shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind? 17. All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow, and wrath with his sickness.

6. 9—17. Great riches, as well as all other things, however in general current, will be found a great vanity.

7. The earth affords enough for all, and agriculture is a noble employment, as it may be rendered, the excellency of the earth above all things is this; we can do much better without the merchant, than without the husbandman. The king himself is served by the field, with provisions for himself and his household: or, is a servant to the field, delights in husbandry, and counts it no disparagement to his dignity to follow the plough.

8. Tillage is a cordial employment; and a decent provision, got by honest industry, desirable; but inordinate love of money is criminal, and attended with much misery.

[1.] The desires are infallible, 6. 10. He that hath much, would still have more, and is ever craving. The abundance possessed cannot satisfy; something still is wanted. Hunger cannot be fed on gold; much less the soul find red in this shining vanity.

[2.] Great estates will be attended with great expences: as the wealth increases, to doth the family, equipage, and retinue; and the owner hath no other satisfaction of his affluence, than the living it with his eyes. He can but have food and raiment, and that he had equally sufficient for himself when he had less. Indeed to have it in our power to do good is a blessing: but when the heart is covetous, it gives a man but pain to see his substance devoured.

[3.] The servant who labours hath, in some instances, the advantage. Sworn sleep cloke his eyes; no indigestion disturbs his slumbers; no cares keep him waking; weary with full he ropes, and idles retitled and vigorous. Thus shall the weary believer red, and wake with joy in a resurrection-day. But the matter, gorged to satiety, with his stomach loaded, lies down and sobs redness and unquiet on his bed of down; or, filled with carking anxiety, and a world of business, his ruffled mind admits not the soft hand of sleep to clothe his eyelids; or perhaps conscious guilt haunts him, and fixates him with brightest dreams from broken slumbers.

[4.] Riches are often exceeding hurtful to their owners: they tempt the robber and murderer; they afford opportunity to gratify every lawless appetite; puff up the mind usually

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with pride and security; through excess and luxury, bring diseases upon the body; and plunge men into diverse foolish and hurtful suits, which finally drown the soul in perdition and destruction; and a fire evil indeed is that!

(5.) Riches ill got, or ill used, soon perish by evil travel; trusting beyond their capital, many have been ruined; by mismanagement, the greatest estate melts as snow before the sun; and God, in his providence, often blows upon the abundance of the wicked, and like a shadow it flees away. So that his son, who was to have inherited after him, finds himself a beggar, and worse off, than if he had been born with no expectations, and taught to earn his own bread.

(6.) Riches cannot descend with men into the grave. Naked as they came from the womb, must they be carried to the tomb, and leave all their possessions behind them. In all points as he came, he shall be go, and if this be the case, what people hath he that hath labored for the wind? for as vain will riches then appear, and as unsatisfying. A fire evil this, to those who had taken up their rest below, and laid to their soul, take their case. Next, (1.) Though our bodies must return to the dust from whence they came, it were grievous if the soul returned as it came, unrenewed and unholy; better far never to have been born, than thus to die. (2.) They who labour for their bodies merely, will find their fearful disappointment at last; whilst they who labour for their souls, will carry all their riches with them.

(7.) Riches often makes a man’s days uncomfortable, as well as his death miserable. All his days he catch in darkness, his carking cares prevent his enjoying his very meals; or he grudges the expence; or his soul is utterly destitute of the divine light and love. And he hath much serious, and wreath in his sickness; it is bad with him in health, and worse with him in sickness; he receives it not as the rod of fatherly chastisement, but finds the wrath that is in the visitation; quarrels with God’s providence, grieves bitterly at the thought of leaving all behind him, and is shocked at the terrible apprehensions of death. Or as the words may be rendered, he is much angry, a thousand causes of vexation daily arise to him, from those around him; and he hath sickness brought on him by his fretfulness and anxiety, and wrath at those about him; discontented and peevish with them, however assiduous to wait upon him; or with God himself, for having thus assisted him, and this but aggravates his misery.