1 The Rise of False Prophets But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned.
3 And intheirgreed they will exploit you with false words, their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
4 For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the 2:4 Gr tartarus pit and delivered them to chains of darkness, being kept for judgment;
5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a 2:5Or herald preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
6 andifHe condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducingthemto ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodlylivesthereafter;
7 andifHe rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
8 (for by what he saw and heardthatrighteous man, while living among them, felthisrighteous soul tormented day after day bytheirlawless deeds),
9 thenthe Lord knows how to rescue the godly from 2:9Or temptation trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
10 and especially those who go after the flesh initscorrupt lust and despise authority.Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme 2:10Angels glorious ones,
11 whereas angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.
12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in 2:12 Lit their destruction also the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,
13 suffering unrighteousness as the wages oftheirunrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime—they arestains and blemishes, reveling in their 2:13One early ms love feasts deceptions, as they feast with you,
14 having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—they areaccursed children.
15 Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, thesonof Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness,
16 but he received a rebuke for his own lawlessness,fora mute donkey, speaking out with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.
17 These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the 2:17Lit blackness of darkness black darkness has been kept.
18 For speaking out arrogantwordsof vanity, they entice by sensual lusts of the flesh, those who barely escape from the ones who conducted themselves in error,
19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.
20 For if they are overcome, havingbothescaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and having again been entangled in them,thenthe last state has become worse for them than the first.
21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.
22 The 2:22Lit thing messageof the true proverb has happened to them, “Adog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing,returnsto wallowing in the mire.”