Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹⁷ These people are springs without water. They are patches of fog driven along by a storm. The depth of darkness has been reserved for them! ¹⁸ They utter bombastic words of folly as they entice, with licentious fleshly desires, those who have only just escaped from the company of people who behave improperly. ¹⁹ They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves to corruption. (A person who is defeated by something, you see, is enslaved to it.) ²⁰ For if they have fled the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus the Messiah, but again become entangled in them and are defeated, they have ended up in a worse state than they were before. ²¹ It would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment which had been given to them. ²² There is a true proverb which now applies to them: the dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow gets washed only to wallow once more in the mud.