One Year Bible.

The Value of Wisdom

¹A good name is better than fine perfume,

and one’s day of death is better than his day of birth.

²It is better to enter a house of mourning

than a house of feasting,

since death is the end of every man,

and the living should take this to heart.

³Sorrow is better than laughter,

for a sad countenance is good for the heart.

⁴The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,

but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

⁵It is better to heed a wise man’s rebuke

than to listen to the song of fools.

⁶For like the crackling of thorns under the pot,

so is the laughter of the fool. This too is futile.

⁷Surely extortion turns a wise man into a fool,

and a bribe corrupts the heart.

⁸The end of a matter is better than the beginning,

and a patient spirit is better than a proud one.

⁹Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit,

for anger settles in the lap of a fool.

¹⁰Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”

For it is unwise of you to ask about this.

¹¹Wisdom, like an inheritance, is good,

and it benefits those who see the sun.

¹²For wisdom, like money, is a shelter,

and the advantage of knowledge

is that wisdom preserves the life of its owner.

¹³Consider the work of God:

Who can straighten what He has bent?

¹⁴In the day of prosperity, be joyful,

but in the day of adversity, consider this:

God has made one of these along with the other,

so that a man cannot discover

anything that will come after him.

The Limits of Human Wisdom

¹⁵In my futile life I have seen both of these:

A righteous man perishing in his righteousness,

and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.

¹⁶Do not be overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? ¹⁷Do not be excessively wicked, and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time? ¹⁸It is good to grasp the one and not let the other slip from your hand. For he who fears God will follow both warnings.

¹⁹Wisdom makes the wise man

stronger than ten rulers in a city.

²⁰Surely there is no righteous man on earth

who does good and never sins.

²¹Do not pay attention to every word that is spoken, or you may hear your servant cursing you. ²²For you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.

²³All this I tested by wisdom, saying, “I resolve to be wise.” But it was beyond me. ²⁴What exists is out of reach and very deep. Who can fathom it?

²⁵I directed my mind to understand, to explore, to search out wisdom and explanations, and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the folly of madness. ²⁶And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a net, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is ensnared.

²⁷“Behold,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find an explanation. ²⁸While my soul was still searching but not finding, among a thousand I have found one upright man, but among all these I have not found one such woman. ²⁹Only this have I found: I have discovered that God made mankind upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”

Obey the King

¹Who is like the wise man? Who knows the interpretation of a matter? A man’s wisdom brightens his face, and the sternness of his face is changed.

²Keep the king’s command, I say, because of your oath before God. ³Do not hasten to leave his presence, and do not persist in a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. ⁴For the king’s word is supreme, and who can say to him, “What are you doing?”

⁵Whoever keeps his command will come to no harm, and a wise heart knows the right time and procedure. ⁶For there is a right time and procedure to every purpose, though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him. ⁷Since no one knows what will happen, who can tell him what is to come?

⁸As no man has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has authority over his day of death. As no one can be discharged in wartime, so wickedness will not release those who practice it. ⁹All this I have seen, applying my mind to every deed that is done under the sun; there is a time when one man lords it over another to his own detriment.

Fear God

¹⁰Then too, I saw the burial of the wicked who used to go in and out of the holy place, and they were praised in the city where they had done so. This too is futile. ¹¹When the sentence for a crime is not speedily executed, the hearts of men become fully set on doing evil.

¹²Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and still lives long, yet I also know that it will go well with those who fear God, who are reverent in His presence. ¹³Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.

God’s Ways Are Mysterious

¹⁴There is a futility that is done on the earth: There are righteous men who get what the actions of the wicked deserve, and there are wicked men who get what the actions of the righteous deserve. I say that this too is futile.

¹⁵So I commended the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be merry. For this joy will accompany him in his labor during the days of his life that God gives him under the sun.

¹⁶When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the task that one performs on the earth — though his eyes do not see sleep in the day or even in the night — ¹⁷I saw every work of God, and that a man is unable to comprehend the work that is done under the sun. Despite his efforts to search it out, he cannot find its meaning; even if the wise man claims to know, he is unable to comprehend.

A Greeting from Peter

¹Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

²Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Partakers of the Divine Nature

³His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. ⁴Through these He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, now that you have escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

⁵For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; ⁶and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. ⁸For if you possess these qualities and continue to grow in them, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹But whoever lacks these traits is nearsighted to the point of blindness, having forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

¹⁰Therefore, brothers, strive to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these things you will never stumble, ¹¹and you will receive a lavish reception into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

¹²Therefore I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are established in the truth you now have. ¹³I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of my body, ¹⁴because I know that this tent will soon be laid aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. ¹⁵And I will make every effort to ensure that after my departure, you will be able to recall these things at all times.

Eyewitnesses of His Majesty

¹⁶For we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. ¹⁷For He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to Him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” ¹⁸And we ourselves heard this voice from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.

¹⁹We also have the word of the prophets as confirmed beyond doubt. And you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. ²⁰Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture comes from one’s own interpretation. ²¹For no such prophecy was ever brought forth by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Deliverance from False Prophets

¹Now there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them — bringing swift destruction on themselves. ²Many will follow in their depravity, and because of them the way of truth will be defamed. ³In their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with deceptive words. The longstanding verdict against them remains in force, and their destruction does not sleep.

⁴For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell, placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; ⁵if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; ⁶if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction, reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly; ⁷and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless ⁸(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard )— ⁹if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

¹⁰Such punishment is specially reserved for those who indulge the corrupt desires of the flesh and despise authority. Bold and self-willed, they are unafraid to slander glorious beings. ¹¹Yet not even angels, though greater in strength and power, dare to bring such slanderous charges against them before the Lord.

¹²These men are like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be captured and destroyed. They blaspheme in matters they do not understand, and like such creatures, they too will be destroyed. ¹³The harm they will suffer is the wages of their wickedness.

They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deception as they feast with you. ¹⁴Their eyes are full of adultery; their desire for sin is never satisfied; they seduce the unstable. They are accursed children with hearts trained in greed.

¹⁵They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness. ¹⁶But he was rebuked for his transgression by a donkey, otherwise without speech, that spoke with a man’s voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

¹⁷These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. ¹⁸With lofty but empty words, they appeal to the sensual passions of the flesh and entice those who are just escaping from others who live in error. ¹⁹They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves to depravity. For a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.

²⁰If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, only to be entangled and overcome by it again, their final condition is worse than it was at first. ²¹It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn away from the holy commandment passed on to them. ²²Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”