I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel."

They are full of poison like snakes; they stop up their ears like a deaf cobra,

which does not hear the voice of the snake charmer, or the chant of the clever magician.

The evil plots you make are as deadly as the eggs of a poisonous snake. Crush an egg, out comes a snake! But your plots will do you no good---they are as useless as clothing made of cobwebs!

When John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him to be baptized, he said to them, "You snakes---who told you that you could escape from the punishment God is about to send?

And don't think you can escape punishment by saying that Abraham is your ancestor. I tell you that God can take these rocks and make descendants for Abraham!

You snakes and children of snakes! How do you expect to escape from being condemned to hell?

You are the children of your father, the Devil, and you want to follow your father's desires. From the very beginning he was a murderer and has never been on the side of truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he is only doing what is natural to him, because he is a liar and the father of all lies.

and said, "You son of the Devil! You are the enemy of everything that is good. You are full of all kinds of evil tricks, and you always keep trying to turn the Lord's truths into lies!

Whoever continues to sin belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the very beginning. The Son of God appeared for this very reason, to destroy what the Devil had done.

and to wait for his Son to come from heaven---his Son Jesus, whom he raised from death and who rescues us from God's anger that is coming.

There are these two things, then, that cannot change and about which God cannot lie. So we who have found safety with him are greatly encouraged to hold firmly to the hope placed before us.