TEXT [Commentary]

black diamond   8.   God is distant (5:1-7)

1 [*]As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. It is evil to make mindless offerings to God. 2 [*]Don’t make rash promises, and don’t be hasty in bringing matters before God. After all, God is in heaven, and you are here on earth. So let your words be few.

3 Too much activity gives you restless dreams; too many words make you a fool.

4 When you make a promise to God, don’t delay in following through, for God takes no pleasure in fools. Keep all the promises you make to him. 5 It is better to say nothing than to make a promise and not keep it. 6 Don’t let your mouth make you sin. And don’t defend yourself by telling the Temple messenger that the promise you made was a mistake. That would make God angry, and he might wipe out everything you have achieved.

7 Talk is cheap, like daydreams and other useless activities. Fear God instead.

NOTES

5:1 [4:17] It is evil to make. The NLT collapses the last two clauses of the Heb. for readability’s sake. A more word-for-word translation of the Heb. text of the last clause would be: “For they do not know to do evil.” The reference is to those who offer the mindless offerings, and does not denote their inability to do evil, but rather that “they do not know that they are doing evil.” Those who perform mindless offerings are so foolish they do not know that what they are doing is evil. For a defense of this understanding of the verse, see Ogden (1987:76) over against Driver (1964:79) and Schmidt (1940–1941).

mindless offerings. The NLT interprets the Heb. expression that is lit. “the sacrifice of fools.” The text is ambiguous as to whether the expression refers to a certain type of sacrifice or a sacrifice offered with a particular mind-set, or lack thereof, or if it is referring to all sacrifices as foolish, since “God is in heaven” and therefore unaffected by human sacrifices. In either case, as the section below will explain, the Teacher does not take an enthusiastic view of OT worship practices in this section. At best, he is urging great caution because of the potential dangers of these acts, as well as the minimal benefits.

5:2 [1] rash promises. The Heb. reads “do not be quick with your mouth.” The reference here is not specifically to promises made to God, which is the subject of 5:4-7 [3-6]. The topic of this verse and the next is prayer, not specifically promises.

5:4 [3] promise. The promise is specifically a vow (neder [TH5088A, ZH5624]), a formal promise to God that necessitates a payment of some sort, like a sacrifice, when fulfilled.

5:6 [5] Temple messenger. The Heb. has “messenger” only; the NLT and NIV supply “Temple” and thus indicate that they follow the tradition of interpreting this passage as instruction about what to do when the Temple authorities send out a priestly messenger to pick up that which one has promised/vowed at the time that God fulfills his part of the obligation (see Salters 1978). Another line of interpretation understands the messenger to be an angel sent by God—so the Gr. translations by Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus (see also Ginsberg 1952:340-344).

COMMENTARY [Text]

The Teacher now turns his full attention to the question of how we ought to relate to God. He certainly believes that God exists and that he is powerful. The question, though, is whether or not God is someone who can help, someone to whom we ought to get close. The Teacher seems wary of too much intimacy with God and advises his hearers to be extremely careful as they approach him. His comments about relating to God are specifically connected to formal worship. It must be remembered that in the Old Testament God made his presence known to his people only in special locations. The sanctuary was the preeminent place where one encountered God during the Old Testament period, and so it is that the Teacher specifically talks about how to behave when going to God’s house, another name for the sanctuary. In particular, he refers to three acts that take place in the house of God—sacrifice, prayer, and taking vows.

In the first verse, the Teacher cautions the worshipper to be very careful when entering God’s house. In particular, the worshipper should not speak needlessly, if at all. He should keep his ears open, or more literally “listen.” To “listen” in this type of context means to obey (so Perdue 1977:182). The sanctuary was a holy place where God made his special presence known. A mistake could be very costly indeed. The seriousness of being in the presence of God is illustrated by the fact that even the High Priest is warned that unwanted intrusions into the divine presence could result in death (Lev 16:2). If one offers a sacrifice, it had better be done right and with the right heart or else the consequences could be worse than not offering any sacrifice. Exactly what a “mindless sacrifice” entails is difficult to determine exactly (see note on 5:1), but it probably refers to a sacrifice not done according to divine instruction (Lev 1–7) or one done with the wrong heart attitude (Ps 40:6-8). Micah 6:6-8 contrasts sacrifice with a right attitude and behavior and concludes: “The LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” However, the Teacher’s thought is more biting than what we read in Psalm 40 and Micah 6. The broader context leads us to the opinion that to the Teacher all sacrifices are mindless and to be avoided at all costs. After all, according to 5:2 God is in heaven and people are on earth, a phrase that indicates the Teacher’s view that God is not very involved in people’s lives.

The Teacher is similarly cautious about praying to God. In 5:2, the Teacher is not warning against rash promises in particular, but against speaking any words (that is, prayer) before God. The motivation is clear; God is not around to hear your prayer. He is in heaven, and you are on earth. This is not a statement of piety as much as it is a denial of God’s intimate involvement with his people. The Teacher gets no solace from God throughout the book, and this verse gives us one reason why. Again, this is not a denial of the existence of God but an extreme statement concerning the distance that the Teacher feels from him. Keep words to a minimum, he advises. Otherwise, as 5:3 indicates, one lives in a fantasy world. That verse is a proverb that sets up a comparison. Just like much activity leads to restless dreams, so too many words toward God makes you a fool. Why a fool? The comparison indicates that it is because people are dreaming if they think the words will have any effect. Again, God is in heaven, not on earth, to hear and respond to your prayers.

The third and longest section (5:4-7) has to do with vows, here called promises to God. Like sacrifice and prayer, a vow was a cultic tribute to God. When taking a vow, worshippers committed themselves to undertake some kind of action, often a sacrifice, if God would answer a specific request (Gen 28:20-22; Judg 11:30-31; 1 Sam 1:11) or simply to curry God’s favor (Ps 132:2-5).

The Teacher begins with the warning that a vow should not be broken. This caution fits in with broader Scriptural teaching (Deut 23:21; Prov 20:25). It is dangerous and wrong to break a promise to God. To do so defines a person as a fool, one who does not know how to live life rightly or successfully. Indeed, not only should a person follow through on their vows to God, but they had better not delay or put it off! Worse yet, according to 5:6, one who vows will encounter huge problems in their relationship with God if the Temple has to send a “collector,” here called a “messenger,” to collect on the vow. The Teacher believes that if the messenger is turned away, then God will retaliate by wiping out everything that the person who took the vow has accomplished.

So, once again, as with prayer, the Teacher advises his listeners to take few, if any vows. The more vows one takes, the more responsibility one bears before God. Furthermore, the Teacher never describes God as merciful or redemptive. Indeed, not only here, but elsewhere in his speech, he gives the impression of a rather vindictive God, a God to be avoided rather than sought after. Again, God is in heaven, and you are here on earth (5:2).

As with 5:3, so this second part of the unit (5:7) ends with a proverb-like statement that compares talk (and by implication of the context specifically talk directed to God) with dreams. A person is dreaming if they think their chatter before the distant God is going to do them much good.

In summary, our understanding is that the Teacher is not positively inclined toward God. He does not think that God helps much, and indeed he might be more trouble than help. He is best avoided or at least approached at a minimum. In this context, as in other contexts within the speech of the Teacher, we thus understand his admonition to “fear God,” not in the sense of respect, but rather in the sense of being afraid of a God who could hurt a person (cf. Mavis 1999).