Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

Reality in Religion. This section deals with worship and vows. Those who go to the house of God (whether Temple or synagogue is not clear) must go reverently and thoughtfully. Keep thy foot recalls the Oriental practice of removing one's shoes in sacred places (Exodus 3:5). The great requirement in religion is not the ritual sacrifice but the spirit of discipleship and obedience (1 Samuel 15:22 and the prophets passim). Read, with a slight change, for they know nothing except how to do evil.

Ecclesiastes 5:2 may refer to prayer (cf. Matthew 6:7) or to vows (cf. Ecclesiastes 5:4). The remoteness of God was a feature of late Jewish thought; the gap had to be filled by angels (cf. Ecclesiastes 5:6) and by abstractions like the Wisdom, the Word, the Glory, and the Spirit of God.

Ecclesiastes 5:3 is a gloss which breaks the line of thought. It seems to mean that as a worried mind leads to dreams, so the fool's much speaking leads to nothing substantial; or a multitude of business may refer to the confused complexity of a dream. With Ecclesiastes 5:4 f. cf. Deuteronomy 23:21 ff. The Talmudic tract Nedarim shows that evasions of hasty vows were frequent in late Judaism. The classic example of a rash vow in OT is Jephthah (Judges 11). Read, there is no delight in fools; it is fools who make hasty vows. Such vows lead one's whole being into sin, the lips involve the entire body (Ecclesiastes 5:6). Angel may be a synonym for God (cf. LXX), or for the priest (Malachi 2:7) or other Temple official who recorded vows. On vows see p. 105. In Ecclesiastes 5:7 read mg., or, with slight change, in a multitude of dreams and words are many vanities. It is an interpolation like Ecclesiastes 5:3, and perhaps originally a marginal variant of it.