¹² If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you mock, you alone will bear it.

² "Can a man be profitable to God? Surely he who is wise is profitable to himself.

³ Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that you are righteous? Or does it benefit him, that you make your ways perfect?

²¹ "Acquaint yourself with him, now, and be at peace. Thereby good shall come to you.

⁶ If you have sinned, what effect do you have against him? If your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him?

⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give him? Or what does he receive from your hand?

²⁶ The appetite of the laboring man labors for him; For his mouth urges him on.

²² Now therefore don't you be scoffers, lest your bonds be made strong; for a decree of destruction have I heard from the Lord, Yahweh of Hosts, on the whole earth.

²⁰ The soul who sins, he shall die: the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be on him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be on him.

³ knowing this first, that in the last days mockers will come, walking after their own lusts,

⁴ and saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."

¹⁶ as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.