³ When the troops came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord put us to rout today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, so that he may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.”^(A)

Warnings from Israel’s History

10 I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea,^{(A) 2} and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³ and all ate the same spiritual food,^{(B) 4} and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.^{(C) 5} Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.^(D)

Judgment on False Teachers

⁵ Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, once and for all, that Jesus, who saved^[a] a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.^(A)

²¹ And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for^[a] a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,^(A)

⁴ In it stood the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which there were a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant;^(A)

⁵ holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!

²⁸ For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something external and physical.^{(A) 29} Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. Such a person receives praise not from humans but from God.^(B)

²⁵ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶ You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate,^[a] so that the outside also may become clean.

²⁷ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. ²⁸ So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

⁹ and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.^{(A) 10} Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.^(B)