Even if you beat fools half to death, you still can't beat their foolishness out of them.

Surely the LORD looks for faithfulness. He struck you, but you paid no attention; he crushed you, but you refused to learn. You were stubborn and would not turn from your sins.

"I hear the people of Israel say in grief, ' LORD, we were like an untamed animal, but you taught us to obey. Bring us back; we are ready to return to you, the LORD our God.

They have lost all feeling of shame; they give themselves over to vice and do all sorts of indecent things without restraint.

A fool doing some stupid thing a second time is like a dog going back to its vomit.

Make sure that there is no one here today who hears these solemn demands and yet convinces himself that all will be well with him, even if he stubbornly goes his own way. That would destroy all of you, good and evil alike.

Instead, you laughed and celebrated. You killed sheep and cattle to eat, and you drank wine. You said, "We might as well eat and drink! Tomorrow we'll be dead."

'Let's get some wine,' these drunkards say, 'and drink all we can hold! Tomorrow will be even better than today!' "

If I have, as it were, fought "wild beasts" here in Ephesus simply from human motives, what have I gained? But if the dead are not raised to life, then, as the saying goes, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die."

Come back to your right senses and stop your sinful ways. I declare to your shame that some of you do not know God.

What happened to them shows that the proverbs are true: "A dog goes back to what it has vomited" and "A pig that has been washed goes back to roll in the mud."