¹⁶ You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles?^(A)

A Tree and Its Fruit

⁴³ “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit;^{(A) 44} for each tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a bramble bush.^{(B) 45} The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.^(C)

¹² Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

A Tree and Its Fruit

³³ “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.^(A)

²⁰ Thus you will know them by their fruits.

¹⁰ But these people slander whatever they do not understand, and they are destroyed by those things that, like irrational animals, they know by instinct. ¹¹ Woe to them! For they go the way of Cain and abandon themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain and perish in Korah’s rebellion.^{(A) 12} These are blots^[a] on your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, feeding themselves.^[b] They are waterless clouds carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted;^{(B) 13} wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever.^(C)

¹⁴ It was also about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “See, the Lord is coming^[c] with ten thousands of his holy ones,^{(D) 15} to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly^[d] of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” ¹⁶ These are grumblers and malcontents; they indulge their lusts;^[e] their mouths utter bombastic nonsense, flattering people to their own advantage.^(E)

Warnings and Exhortations

¹⁷ But you, beloved, must remember the words previously spoken by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁸ for they said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts.”^{(F) 19} It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions.

¹⁰ —especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust and who despise authority.

Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,^{[a](A) 11} whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring against them a slanderous judgment.^{[b] 12} These people, however, are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed. They slander what they do not understand, and as those creatures are destroyed,^[c] they also will be destroyed, ¹³ suffering^[d] the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures^[e] while they feast with you.^{(B) 14} They have eyes full of adultery,^[f] insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! ¹⁵ They have left the straight road and have gone astray, following the road of Balaam son of Bosor,^[g] who loved the wages of doing wrong^{(C) 16} but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

¹⁷ These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the deepest darkness has been reserved.^{(D) 18} For they speak bombastic nonsense, and with debased^[h] desires of the flesh they entice people who have just^[i] escaped from those who live in error.