15. Abandoning the straight road, they have gone astray, following the road of Balaam, the son of Bosor, who loved payment for wrongdoing,
16. but he received a rebuke for his own crime: a mute beast spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.
17. These people are waterless springs and mists driven by a gale; for them the gloom of darkness has been reserved.
18. For, talking empty bombast, they seduce with licentious desires of the flesh those who have barely escaped from people who live in error.
19. They promise them freedom, though they themselves are slaves of corruption, for a person is a slave of whatever overcomes him.
20. For if they, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of [our] Lord and savior Jesus Christ, again become entangled and overcome by them, their last condition is worse than their first.
21. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment handed down to them.
22. What is expressed in the true proverb has happened to them, “The dog returns to its own vomit,” and “A bathed sow returns to wallowing in the mire.”