May 14, 2026

Business by the Book

Ecclesiastes 5:3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.

The comparison!  In this verse there are one single and two doubles. 

The single is found in the word “multitude”. This same word may be used twice but the implications of the “multitude” it describes could not be farther apart.  One multitude is business; indicating work, energy, purpose, drive, effort, patience and so on and on and on.  The other multitude is words.  Words take very little energy, no work, and no effort other than to speak the words, none of the attributes of business can be found in mere words. 

One double is business and words.  The term “big talk, little do” would be appropriate here.  There are those who can talk the proverbial “blue streak”, but they do little work.  Every workplace has them, every job site, every college, church, and civic organization.  If empty and vain words could be sold, every slacker would be a millionaire.  Ron Hamilton wrote a song for children called “Hypocritter”.  One line of that song says, “Your walk walks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.” 

The second double is found in the comparison of the words “dream cometh” and “fool’s voice”.  Who would willingly choose the latter when they could have the former?  Few to be sure.  But that is the reality, many more have a “fool’s voice” than they have a “dream cometh”.   Jesus warned us in Matthew 5:22 to guard against calling someone a fool, but the Lord God uses the word 69 times in Scripture.  He has a lot to say about fools, one would do well to do a word study of this word.  It may be that a fool would be turned from foolishness, thereby escaping an awful fate.

Those who are leaders must be dreamers, for they are leading people to a place they have probably never been.  Striving for excellence, building a new product, developing a fresh and exciting marketing program, seeing what needs to be done before it needs to be done: tasks like these are not common run of the mill attributes of most workers.  They need leaders to have the dream of excellence, new products, fresh ideas for increasing sales, or plain and simple work plans.  These leaders are to take dreams like these, and countless others, and motivate their followers to perform them.  Through leadership and followers performing a “multitude of business” those dreams can come true. 

Dare to dream!  I’ve had five basic dreams for my life that were established during my teen years.  One has been accomplished, two never will be, and the other two are still works in progress.  How about you? How are you doing?  Just talking, or performing a multitude of business?

Dr. William Howe