⁴ And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.^(A)”

³⁹ “But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.^(A)

³² Remember Lot’s wife!^(A)

¹⁶ The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses^(A) for himself^(B) or make the people return to Egypt^(C) to get more of them,^(D) for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.”^(E)

¹⁵ If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.^(A)

⁶⁸ The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again.^(A) There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.

²¹ It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.^{(A) 22} Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”^[a](B) and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”

³⁸ And,

³⁹ But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.