2 Peter 2

1But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves.

2And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be blasphemed.

3And in greed they will exploit you with fabricated words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

4For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus and committed them to chains of gloom, to be kept for judgment,

5and if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, an eighth person, a herald of righteousness, when he brought a flood upon a world of the ungodly,

6and if by reducing the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to destruction, having made them an example for those who would be ungodly,

7and he rescued righteous Lot, who was being tormented by the sensual conduct of the lawless—

8for by what he saw and heard, that righteous man, living among them, was tormenting his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds—

9then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,

10especially those who go after the flesh in the desire for defilement and despise authority. Bold, self-willed, they do not tremble as they blaspheme glorious ones,

11whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring a slanderous judgment against them.

12But these, like irrational animals—creatures of instinct, born for capture and destruction—blaspheming about things they do not understand, will also be destroyed in their destruction,

13suffering the wages of unrighteousness, considering daytime indulgence a pleasure. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while feasting with you,

14having eyes full of an adulteress and insatiable for sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, children of a curse,

15Having abandoned the straight way, they went astray, having followed the way of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.

16But he received a rebuke for his own transgression: a mute beast of burden, speaking with a human voice, restrained the prophet’s madness.

17These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm, for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept.

18For, speaking inflated words of emptiness, they entice by fleshly desires and sensuality those who are barely escaping from those who live in error,

19promising them freedom while they themselves are servants of corruption; for whatever a person is overcome by, by this he is also enslaved.

20For if, after escaping the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus the Messiah, they are again entangled in these things and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

21For 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 delivered to them.

22What the true proverb says has happened to them: “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A washed sow returns to wallowing in the mud.”