Job 23:11

¹⁸Our heart has not turned back, neither have our steps strayed from your path,

²⁰For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. ²¹For 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. ²²But it has happened to them according to the true proverb, “The dog turns to his own vomit again,”and “the sow that has washed to wallowing in the mire.”

⁵My steps have held fast to your paths. My feet have not slipped.

⁵But as for those who turn away to their crooked ways, the LORD will lead them away with the workers of iniquity. Peace be on Israel.

⁹Yet the righteous will hold to his way. He who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger.

⁷to those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life;

¹³Those on the rock are they who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; but these have no root. They believe for a while, then fall away in time of temptation. ¹⁴What fell among the thorns, these are those who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life; and they bring no fruit to maturity. ¹⁵Those in the good ground, these are those who with an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it tightly, and produce fruit with perseverance.

²⁰The LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness. According to the cleanness of my hands, he has recompensed me. ²¹For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God. ²²For all his ordinances were before me. I didn’t put away his statutes from me. ²³I was also blameless with him. I kept myself from my iniquity. ²⁴Therefore the LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.

¹²For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we behaved ourselves in the world, and more abundantly toward you.

¹⁸When they had come to him, he said to them, “You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you all the time, ¹⁹serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears, and with trials which happened to me by the plots of the Jews;