⁶ Abraham said to him, "Beware that you don't bring my son there again.

¹ Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don't be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

³⁹ But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul.

⁹ By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

¹³ These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen{TR adds "and being convinced of"} them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

¹⁴ For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking after a country of their own.

¹⁵ If indeed they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had enough time to return.

¹⁶ But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

²⁰ For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the last state has become worse with them than the first.

²¹ For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

²² But it has happened to them according to the true proverb, "The dog turns to his own vomit again," and "the sow that had washed to wallowing in the mire."