Ecclesiastes5:4

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Translation

When you vow a vow

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to ELOHIM do not delay to complete it

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for [He has] no pleasure in fools. Make good on

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what you have vowed.

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Paraphrase

When you make a serious commitment to THE CREATOR AND RULER OF ALL THINGS, do not procrastinate in bringing it to completion; He is not pleased with us when we play games. Therefore, fully complete what you promised Him you would do.

Footnotes

1

It would have been enough to simply use the verb which means “to make a vow,” but there is more emphasis attained by using a phrase with the same word twice, “to vow a vow.”

2: “to complete it”

This is the great Hebrew word “Shalom” which you probably know means “peace,” but their concept of peace was much more than an absence of violence, it meant “completeness, wholeness, wellbeing, to finish, to make safe or secure.” In this context it means “to bring to completion” with the idea that if you do not complete what you have vowed you will cause a rift in your relationship with God.

3

Once again the word for “peace” is used for the idea of completion.

4

Vows do not always have to do with money, so “pay what you have vowed” is a bit too narrow, that is why I have chosen “make good on what you have vowed”.