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With their mouths the godless would destroy their neighbors,
    but by knowledge the righteous are delivered.

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10 for wisdom will come into your heart,
    and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
11 prudence will watch over you,
    and understanding will guard you.
12 It will save you from the way of evil,
    from those who speak perversely,
13 who forsake the paths of uprightness
    to walk in the ways of darkness,(A)
14 who rejoice in doing evil
    and delight in the perverseness of evil,(B)
15 those whose paths are crooked
    and who are devious in their ways.(C)

16 You will be saved from the loose woman,[a]
    from the adulteress[b] with her smooth words,(D)

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Footnotes

  1. 2.16 Heb strange woman
  2. 2.16 Heb alien woman

Get wisdom; get insight: do not forget nor turn away
    from the words of my mouth.(A)
Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
    love her, and she will guard you.(B)

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27 As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him.[a](A)

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Footnotes

  1. 2.27 Or it

21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth.

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16 speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist[a] to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability.(A) 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.[b]

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Footnotes

  1. 3.16 Other ancient authorities read will twist
  2. 3.18 Other ancient authorities lack Amen

False Prophets and Their Punishment

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.(A) Even so, many will follow their debaucheries, and because of these teachers[a] the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 2.2 Gk because of them

False Asceticism

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later[a] times some will renounce[b] the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,(A) through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. They forbid marriage and abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 4.1 Or the last
  2. 4.1 Or move away from

30 Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them.

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23 For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light,
    and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,(A)
24 to preserve you from the wife of another,[a]
    from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.[b](B)

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Footnotes

  1. 6.24 Gk: MT the evil woman
  2. 6.24 Heb alien woman

20 My companion laid hands on a friend
    and violated a covenant with me[a](A)
21 with speech smoother than butter
    but with a heart set on war,
with words that were softer than oil
    but in fact were drawn swords.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 55.20 Heb lacks with me

12 It is not enemies who taunt me—
    I could bear that;
it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—
    I could hide from them.(A)

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13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity,[a] to the measure of the full stature of Christ.(A) 14 We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming;(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 4.13 Gk to a mature man

13 For such boasters are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.(A) 14 And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is not strange if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness. Their end will match their deeds.(B)

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But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’[a] then that person need not honor the father.[b](A) So, for the sake of your tradition, you nullify the word[c] of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:

‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me;(B)
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ ”(C)

Things That Defile

10 Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”(D) 12 Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” 13 He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.(E) 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.[d] And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.”(F)

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Footnotes

  1. 15.5 Or is an offering
  2. 15.5 Other ancient authorities add or the mother
  3. 15.6 Other ancient authorities read law or commandment
  4. 15.14 Other ancient authorities lack of the blind

A Tree and Its Fruit

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.(A)

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30 so that the godless should not reign
    or those who ensnare the people.(A)

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13 Such are the paths of all who forget God;
    the hope of the godless shall perish.(A)

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20 And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ Then one said one thing, and another said another, 21 until a certain spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ 22 ‘How?’ the Lord asked him. He replied, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then the Lord[a] said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.’(A) 23 So you see, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has decreed disaster for you.”(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 22.22 Heb he

Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred of them, and said to them, “Shall I go to battle against Ramoth-gilead, or shall I refrain?” They said, “Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.”(A)

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And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus[a] will destroy[b] with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming.(A) The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders,(B) 10 and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.(C)

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Footnotes

  1. 2.8 Other ancient authorities lack Jesus
  2. 2.8 Other ancient authorities read consume

22 False messiahs[a] and false prophets will appear and produce signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.(A) 23 But be alert; I have already told you everything.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 13.22 Or christs

The Desolating Sacrilege

14 “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains;(A)

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18 Then the other[a] said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, ‘Bring him back with you into your house so that he may eat food and drink water.’ ” But he was deceiving him. 19 Then the man of God[b] went back with him and ate food and drank water in his house.

20 As they were sitting at the table, the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back, 21 and he cried out to the man of God who came from Judah, “Thus says the Lord: Because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the commandment that the Lord your God commanded you(A) 22 but have come back and have eaten food and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, ‘Eat no food, and drink no water,’ your body shall not come to your ancestral tomb.”

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Footnotes

  1. 13.18 Heb he
  2. 13.19 Heb he