Book of Common Prayer

45 My heart is overflowing with a beautiful thought! I will write a lovely poem to the King, for I am as full of words as the speediest writer pouring out his story.

⁸ Your robes are perfumed with myrrh, aloes, and cassia. In your palaces of inlaid ivory, lovely music is being played for your enjoyment. ⁹ Kings’ daughters are among your concubines.^[a] Standing beside you is the queen, wearing jewelry of finest gold from Ophir.

^10-11 “I advise you, O daughter, not to fret about your parents in your homeland far away. Your royal husband delights in your beauty. Reverence him, for he is your lord. ¹² The people of Tyre, the richest people of our day, will shower you with gifts and entreat your favors.”

¹³ The bride,^[b] a princess, waits within her chamber, robed in beautiful clothing woven with gold. ¹⁴ Lovely^[c] she is, led beside her maids of honor to the king! ¹⁵ What a joyful, glad procession as they enter in the palace gates! ¹⁶ “Your sons will some day be kings like their father. They shall sit on thrones around the world!

¹⁷ “I will cause your name to be honored in all generations; the nations of the earth will praise you forever.”

47 Come, everyone, and clap for joy! Shout triumphant praises to the Lord! ² For the Lord, the God above all gods, is awesome beyond words; he is the great King of all the earth. ³ He subdues the nations before us ⁴ and will personally select his choicest blessings for his Jewish people^[a]—the very best for those he loves.

⁵ God has ascended with a mighty shout, with trumpets blaring. ^6-7 Sing out your praises to our God, our King. Yes, sing your highest praises to our King, the King of all the earth. Sing thoughtful praises! ⁸ He reigns above the nations, sitting on his holy throne. ⁹ The Gentile rulers of the world have joined with us in praising him—praising^[b] the God of Abraham—for the battle shields of all the armies of the world are his trophies. He is highly honored everywhere.

48 How great is the Lord! How much we should praise him. He lives upon Mount Zion in Jerusalem. ² What a glorious sight! See Mount Zion rising north of the city^[c] high above the plains for all to see—Mount Zion, joy of all the earth, the residence of the great King.

³ God himself is the defender of Jerusalem.^{[d] 4} The kings of the earth have arrived together to inspect the city. ⁵ They marvel at the sight and hurry home again, ⁶ afraid of what they have seen; they are filled with panic like a woman in travail! ⁷ For God destroys the mightiest warships with a breath of wind. ⁸ We have heard of the city’s glory—the city of our God, the Commander of the armies of heaven. And now we see it for ourselves! God has established Jerusalem forever.

⁹ Lord, here in your Temple we meditate upon your kindness and your love. ¹⁰ Your name is known throughout the earth, O God. You are praised everywhere for the salvation^[e] you have scattered throughout the world. ¹¹ O Jerusalem,^[f] rejoice! O people of Judah, rejoice! For God will see to it that you are finally treated fairly. ¹² Go, inspect the city! Walk around and count her many towers! ¹³ Note her walls and tour her palaces so that you can tell your children.

¹⁴ For this great God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide until we die.

¹⁶ For the wise and fool both die, and in the days to come both will be long forgotten. ¹⁷ So now I hate life because it is all so irrational; all is foolishness, chasing the wind.

¹⁸ And I am disgusted about this—that I must leave the fruits of all my hard work to others. ¹⁹ And who can tell whether my son will be a wise man or a fool? And yet all I have will be given to him—how discouraging!

^20-23 So I turned in despair from hard work as the answer to my search for satisfaction. For though I spend my life searching for wisdom, knowledge, and skill, I must leave all of it to someone who hasn’t done a day’s work in his life; he inherits all my efforts, free of charge. This is not only foolish but unfair. So what does a man get for all his hard work? Days full of sorrow and grief, and restless, bitter nights. It is all utterly ridiculous.

^24-26 So I decided that there was nothing better for a man to do than to enjoy his food and drink and his job. Then I realized that even this pleasure is from the hand of God. For who can eat or enjoy apart from him? For God gives those who please him wisdom, knowledge, and joy; but if a sinner becomes wealthy, God takes the wealth away from him and gives it to those who please him. So here, too, we see an example of foolishly chasing the wind.

¹⁸ It was not until three years later that I finally went to Jerusalem for a visit with Peter and stayed there with him for fifteen days. ¹⁹ And the only other apostle I met at that time was James, our Lord’s brother. ²⁰ (Listen to what I am saying, for I am telling you this in the very presence of God. This is exactly what happened—I am not lying to you.) ²¹ Then after this visit I went to Syria and Cilicia. ²² And still the Christians in Judea didn’t even know what I looked like. ²³ All they knew was what people were saying, that “our former enemy is now preaching the very faith he tried to wreck.” ²⁴ And they gave glory to God because of me.

2 Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along too. ² I went there with definite orders from God to confer with the brothers there about the message I was preaching to the Gentiles. I talked privately to the leaders of the church so that they would all understand just what I had been teaching and, I hoped, agree that it was right. ³ And they did agree; they did not even demand that Titus, my companion, should be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.

⁴ Even that question wouldn’t have come up except for some so-called “Christians” there—false ones, really—who came to spy on us and see what freedom we enjoyed in Christ Jesus, as to whether we obeyed the Jewish laws or not. They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains. ⁵ But we did not listen to them for a single moment, for we did not want to confuse you into thinking that salvation can be earned by being circumcised and by obeying Jewish laws.

⁶ And the great leaders of the church who were there had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their being great leaders made no difference to me, for all are the same to God.) ^7-9 In fact, when Peter, James, and John, who were known as the pillars of the church, saw how greatly God had used me in winning the Gentiles, just as Peter had been blessed so greatly in his preaching to the Jews—for the same God gave us each our special gifts—they shook hands with Barnabas and me and encouraged us to keep right on with our preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews. ¹⁰ The only thing they did suggest was that we must always remember to help the poor, and I, too, was eager for that.

^53-54 When Jesus had finished giving these illustrations, he returned to his hometown, Nazareth in Galilee,^[a] and taught there in the synagogue and astonished everyone with his wisdom and his miracles.

⁵⁵ “How is this possible?” the people exclaimed. “He’s just a carpenter’s son, and we know Mary his mother and his brothers—James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. ⁵⁶ And his sisters—they all live here. How can he be so great?” ⁵⁷ And they became angry with him!

Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own country, and among his own people!” ⁵⁸ And so he did only a few great miracles there, because of their unbelief.