1 Samuel 24:13

24:13 It’s like the old proverb says: ‘From evil people evil proceeds.’ But my hand will not be against you.

1 Samuel 25:10-11

25:10 But Nabal responded to David’s servants, “Who is David, and who is this son of Jesse? This is a time when many servants are breaking away from their masters! 25:11 Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers and give them to these men? I don’t even know where they came from!”

Jeremiah 13:23

13:23 But there is little hope for you ever doing good,

you who are so accustomed to doing evil.

Can an Ethiopian ¹  change the color of his skin?

Can a leopard remove its spots? ² 

Matthew 12:34-36

12:34 Offspring of vipers! How are you able to say anything good, since you are evil? For the mouth speaks from what fills the heart. 12:35 The good person ³  brings good things out of his ⁴  good treasury, ⁵  and the evil person brings evil things out of his evil treasury. 12:36 I ⁶  tell you that on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every worthless word they speak.

Matthew 15:19

15:19 For out of the heart come evil ideas, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

James 3:5-6

3:5 So too the tongue is a small part of the body, ⁷  yet it has great pretensions. ⁸  Think ⁹  how small a flame sets a huge forest ablaze. 3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ¹⁰  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ¹¹  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ¹² 

¹ tn This is a common proverb in English coming from this biblical passage. For cultures where it is not proverbial perhaps it would be better to translate “Can black people change the color of their skin?” Strictly speaking these are “Cushites” inhabitants of a region along the upper Nile south of Egypt. The Greek text is responsible for the identification with Ethiopia. The term in Greek is actually a epithet = “burnt face.”

² tn Heb “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? [Then] you also will be able to do good who are accustomed to do evil.” The English sentence has been restructured and rephrased in an attempt to produce some of the same rhetorical force the Hebrew original has in this context.

³ tn The Greek text reads here ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpos). The term is generic referring to any person.

⁴ tn Grk “the”; the Greek article has been translated here and in the following clause (“his evil treasury”) as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

⁵ sn The treasury here is a metaphorical reference to a person’s heart (cf. BDAG 456 s.v. θησαυρός 1.b and the parallel passage in Luke 6:45).

⁶ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

⁷ tn Grk “a small member.”

⁸ tn Grk “boasts of great things.”

⁹ tn Grk “Behold.”

¹⁰ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

¹¹ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

¹² sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36).