Ecclesiastes Chapter 5 verse 12 Holy Bible
The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the fulness of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.
read chapter 5 in ASV
There is a great evil which I have seen under the sun--wealth kept by the owner to be his downfall.
read chapter 5 in BBE
The sleep of the labourer is sweet, whether he have eaten little or much; but the fulness of the rich doth not suffer him to sleep.
read chapter 5 in DARBY
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.
read chapter 5 in KJV
read chapter 5 in WBT
The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not allow him to sleep.
read chapter 5 in WEB
Sweet `is' the sleep of the labourer whether he eat little or much; and the sufficiency of the wealthy is not suffering him to sleep.
read chapter 5 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 12. - Another inconvenience of great wealth - it robs a man of his sleep. The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much. The laborer is the husbandman, the tiller of the ground (Genesis 4:2). The Septuagint, with a different pointing, renders δούλου, "slave," which is less appropriate, the fact being generally true of free or bond man. Whether his fare be plentiful or scanty, the honest laborer earns and enjoys his night's rest. But the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. The allusion is not to the overloading of the stomach, which might occasion sleeplessness in the case of the poor equally with the rich man, but to the cares and anxieties which wealth brings. "Not a soft couch, nor a bedstead overlaid with silver, nor the quietness that exists throughout the house, nor any other circumstance of this nature, are so generally wont to make sleep sweet and pleasant, as that of laboring, and growing weary, and lying down with a disposition to sleep, and very greatly needing it .... Not so the rich. On the contrary, whilst lying on their beds, they are frequently without sleep through the whole night; and, though they devise many schemes, they do not obtain such pleasure" (St. Chrysostom, 'Hom. on Stat.,' 22). The contrast between the grateful sleep of the tired worker and the disturbed rest of the avaricious and moneyed and luxurious has formed a fruitful theme for poets. Thus Horace, 'Carm.,' 3:1.21 - "Somnus agrestiumLenis virorum non humiles domesFastidit umbrosamque ripam,Non Zephyris agitata Tempe." "Yet sleep turns never from the lowly shedOf humbler-minded men, nor from the eavesIn Tempe's graceful vale is banished,Where only Zephyrs stir the murmuring leaves."(Stanley.) And the reverse, 'Sat.,' 1:1.76, sqq. - "An vigilare metu exanimem, noctesque diesqueFormidare males fures, inccndia, serves,Ne to compilent fugientes, hoc juvat?" . . .
