Ecclesiastes 5:6 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, &c.— Let not thy mouth weakly excuse thee to no purpose, and do not say before the messenger [who is sent to require from thee what thou hast vowed] it was a mistake. Solomon advises any man who has made a vow to accomplish it, and not to look for excuses and pretences in order to avoid paying that debt. The motive he suggests to support this advice, viz. that the non-payment might be the means of kindling God's wrath against a perjured man, is very proper; for there was a special law (Deuteronomy 23:21.) against any one who was slack in paying a vow; and such a man was particularly threatened with the anger of the Almighty. Every critic knows, that the word angel is literally the name of an office. מלאךֶ, malak, is as often applied to men, as to those spiritual beings whom we call angels, and means a messenger. Now, as the priests kept a servant to levy their share out of the offering of the people, 1 Samuel 2:13-16 and as they were greatly concerned in seeing the vows punctually paid; it is probable that they kept messengers also to go and summon those whom they knew to have vowed any thing the payment of which would be profitable to them. I do not know but that an employment which we find in after-times established in the synagogues, without knowing when it began, might be the same in the main which is here alluded to. The Jews, who scrupled to handle money on the sabbath-day, used to bind themselves on that day to an officer sent by the rulers of the synagogue, to give such or such sum for alms, and that officer received the sum from them the next day. This conjecture is the more probable, as that officer, who was the chazan, or minister of the synagogue, is sometimes styled צבור שׁליח shaliach tsibbur, the messenger of the synagogue. Desvoeux. Archbishop Tillotson understands the passage in the general acceptation. The reader will find his sense of it in his 75th Sermon, on good angels.