¹ Then what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the profit of circumcision?

³² Esau said, "Behold, I am about to die. What good is the birthright to me?"

⁸ For what advantage has the wise more than the fool? What has the poor man, that knows how to walk before the living?

¹¹ For there are many words that create vanity. What does that profit man?

¹¹ "What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me?," says Yahweh. "I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, And the fat of fed animals. I don't delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs, Or of male goats.

¹² When you come to appear before me, Who has required this at your hand, to trample my courts?

¹³ Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me; New moons, Sabbaths, and convocations: I can't bear with evil assemblies.

¹⁴ My soul hates your New Moons and your appointed feasts; They are a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them.

¹⁵ When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.

¹⁴ You have said, 'It is vain to serve God;' and 'What profit is it that we have kept his charge, and that we have walked mournfully before Yahweh of Hosts?

²⁵ For circumcision indeed profits, if you are a doer of the law, but if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.

²⁶ If therefore the uncircumcised keep the ordinances of the law, won't his uncircumcision be accounted as circumcision?

²⁷ Won't the uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfills the law, judge you, who with the letter and circumcision are a transgressor of the law?

²⁸ For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh;

²⁹ but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit not in the letter; whose praise is not from men, but from God.

³² If I fought with animals at Ephesus for human purposes, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, then "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

⁹ Don't be carried away by various and strange teachings, for it is good that the heart be established by grace, not by food, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited.