I shall not be a fool: Paul is not talking here about actually being a fool, but rather about acting like a fool by boasting. Actually Paul does not think it foolish, since he is telling the truth. Translator’s New Testament reads “that would not be foolish of me.” Some languages will require a more natural restructuring such as “I would not be acting like a fool if I decided to boast, because I would be telling the truth.” Compare verse 11 below.

I refrain from it: that is, “I refuse to go on boasting”; or, as Contemporary English Version has it, “I will try not to say too much.”

Most translations complete one sentence at the end of verse 6 with the words “hears from me” (Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation, Revised English Bible) and begin a new sentence at verse 7. In Greek the first words of verse 7 are “by the abundance of revelations.” Other translations, such as New Jerusalem Bible and Martin, connect the words “by the abundance of revelations” to the end of verse 6. New Jerusalem Bible translates 12.6b-7a as follows: “But I will not go on in case anybody should rate me higher than he sees and hears me to be, because of the exceptional greatness of the revelations” (so also New Revised Standard Version, New American Bible, Nouvelle version Segond révisée, and the UBS Greek New Testament). According to this second interpretation people would think too highly of Paul because of the abundance of revelations that he has had.

Though the Greek is literally so that no one, Contemporary English Version is surely correct in translating this as “none of you.”

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellingworth, Paul. A Handbook on Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .