Ecclesiastes 5:4 · World English Bible
Ecclesiastes 5:4 Meaning When You Vow a Vow to God
When you vow a vow to God, don’t defer to pay it; for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay that which you vow.
What does Ecclesiastes 5:4 mean?
A promise you delay paying does not stay a promise; it trains you to disbelieve your own word. Every hour between a commitment and the act that pays it teaches the nervous system that declarations are optional.
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A promise you delay paying does not stay a promise; it trains you to disbelieve your own word.
Every hour between a commitment and the act that pays it teaches the nervous system that declarations are optional. That lesson hardens into a belief about one's own word, the belief lowers what a person expects of themselves, and that expectation sets the state in which the next vow gets made.
What God has no pleasure in is the man who loves the feeling of vowing more than the cost of paying, since the feeling arrives instantly and free. Take an action at the site where the vow was made, and the paying writes in the belief the words only described. Defer it, and a person forfeits the ability to trust what they hear themselves say, which is the instrument every future plan runs on.
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Live Ecclesiastes 5:4 today
- Find one thing you said you would do and have not done, and do the smallest real piece of it in the next ten minutes, even if it is just the email.
- Go back to the person you promised something to and either pay it today or tell them plainly it is not happening. Both are honest. Silence is not.
- The next time you are on a call and feel the pull to say "yes, I will handle that" just to end the discomfort, pause and say what you can actually do by when.
What have I said out loud that I have quietly stopped intending to do?
The same truth in other traditions
Confucius · Analects
The honorable person is slow to speak and quick to act. Words that run ahead of deeds spend something that then is not there when it is needed.
Judaism · Pirkei Avot
Say little and do much. Shammai taught that greeting people with a cheerful face and keeping small promises is the whole shape of a trustworthy person.
Buddhism · right speech
Right speech means saying only what you are prepared to stand behind. Each word a person fails to back quietly loosens their grip on their own mind.
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