Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

2 I said to myself, “Come now, I will test myself with pleasure and enjoying good things”; but this too was pointless. ² Of laughter I said, “This is stupid,” and of pleasure, “What’s the use of it?”

³ I searched my mind for how to gratify my body with wine and, with my mind still guiding me with wisdom, how to pursue foolishness; my object was to find out what was the best thing for people to do during the short time they have under heaven to live. ⁴ I worked on a grand scale — I built myself palaces, planted myself vineyards, ⁵ and made myself gardens and parks; in them I planted all kinds of fruit trees. ⁶ I made myself pools from which to water the trees springing up in the forest. ⁷ I bought male and female slaves, and I had my home-born slaves as well. I also had growing herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, more than anyone before me in Yerushalayim. ⁸ I amassed silver and gold, the wealth of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, things that provide sensual delight, and a good many concubines. ⁹ So I grew great, surpassing all who preceded me in Yerushalayim; my wisdom, too, stayed with me. ¹⁰ I denied my eyes nothing they wanted. I withheld no pleasure from myself; for I took pleasure in all my work, and this was my reward for all my work. ¹¹ Then I looked at all that my hands had accomplished and at the work I had toiled at; and I saw that it was all meaningless and feeding on wind, and that there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

2 As for me, brothers, when I arrived among you, it was not with surpassing eloquence or wisdom that I came announcing to you the previously concealed truth about God; ² for I had decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Yeshua the Messiah, and even him only as someone who had been executed on a stake as a criminal. ³ Also I myself was with you as somebody weak, nervous and shaking all over from fear; ⁴ and neither the delivery nor the content of my message relied on compelling words of “wisdom” but on a demonstration of the power of the Spirit, ⁵ so that your trust might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power.

⁶ Yet there is a wisdom that we are speaking to those who are mature enough for it. But it is not the wisdom of this world or of this world’s leaders, who are in the process of passing away. ⁷ On the contrary, we are communicating a secret wisdom from God which has been hidden until now but which, before history began, God had decreed would bring us glory. ⁸ Not one of this world’s leaders has understood it; because if they had, they would not have executed the Lord from whom this glory flows. ⁹ But, as the Tanakh says,

¹⁰ It is to us, however, that God has revealed these things. How? Through the Spirit. For the Spirit probes all things, even the profoundest depths of God.