2 Peter 2

KJV · Chapter 2/3

¹But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

²And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

³And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

⁴For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

⁵And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

⁶And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

⁷And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:

⁸(For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

⁹The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:

¹⁰But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.

¹¹Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord.

¹²But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;

¹³And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you;

¹⁴Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:

¹⁵Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;

¹⁶But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet.

¹⁷These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.

¹⁸For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.

¹⁹While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

²⁰For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

²¹For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

²²But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

Peter issues a strong warning against false teachers who will arise, introducing destructive heresies, comparing their fate to that of the angels who sinned and to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He contrasts the judgment of these corrupters with the protection God gave to Noah and Lot.

Explanation

Peter uses three biblical examples of judgment — the rebellious angels, Noah's flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah — to show a historical pattern: God judges wickedness, but He also always rescues the faithful in the midst of judgment, as He did with Noah and Lot. The description of the false teachers, driven by greed and sexual immorality, suggests that the church was facing concrete problems with corrupt leaders exploiting the community. The reference to the story of Balaam, whose donkey spoke to restrain his madness, comes from Numbers 22 and reinforces that even an irrational creature can show more discernment than a prophet corrupted by greed. Today's practical application is to exercise critical discernment toward religious leaders, evaluating their character and not just their speech.

Fun facts

The episode of Balaam's talking donkey (mentioned in 2:16) is one of the rare cases in the Bible where an animal communicates verbally, originally recorded in Numbers 22:21-35, when the animal saw an angel that Balaam could not see.

Verse-by-verse explanation

2 Peter 2:1Opens the chapter on false teachers by comparing them to the false prophets of the Old Testament: they don’t arrive declaring themselves enemies of the faith, but introduce errors in disguise, from within the community itself.
2 Peter 2:2Warns of the practical effect of these false teachers: many will follow them, and as a result the Christian faith itself — “the way of truth” — ends up being discredited because of it.
2 Peter 2:3Points out the motive behind these false teachings: greed disguised as spiritual talk — and assures that judgment on them is already on its way, even if it seems slow in coming.
2 Peter 2:4The reference to “the angels that sinned” being cast into hell — in Greek a specific word used only here in the New Testament — and bound in chains of darkness draws on a Jewish tradition about rebellious heavenly beings, without spelling out exactly which biblical episode lies behind it.
2 Peter 2:5Calling Noah “the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness” is a way of counting the eight people saved in the flood — Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives — while also describing Noah as someone who preached about righteousness before the flood, a detail Genesis itself does not directly report.
2 Peter 2:6The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, told in Genesis 19, is used here as a historical example of judgment on cities that lived in a way considered ungodly, serving as a warning about future consequences.
2 Peter 2:7Cites Lot, Abraham’s nephew, living in Sodom, as an example of someone who suffered simply from living near the evil around him — yet whom God still rescued before the city’s destruction.
2 Peter 2:8Details Lot’s inner suffering: witnessing the unjust behavior around him day after day distressed him, even though he took no direct part in it.
2 Peter 2:9Sums up the lesson of the previous examples (the flood, Sodom): God knows how to protect the faithful in the midst of evil just as well as He knows how to keep the unjust for a future judgment.
2 Peter 2:10Begins describing in more detail the behavior of the false teachers: ruled by unclean desires, arrogant, and without respect for authority — whether human or spiritual.
2 Peter 2:11Draws a contrast: even angels, who have more power than these false teachers, do not dare speak evil of superior spiritual beings before God — highlighting the arrogance of these men.
2 Peter 2:12Compares the false teachers to animals driven only by instinct, without reflection — criticizing things they don’t even understand, and destined, according to the text, to destroy themselves through their own behavior.
2 Peter 2:13Describes these false teachers taking part in the community meals of Christians while secretly living corrupt lives — a hypocrisy that makes them, according to the text, a stain on the community.
2 Peter 2:14Continues the list of charges: uncontrolled sexual desire, greed trained like a habit, and the ability to manipulate people whose faith is still unstable.
2 Peter 2:15Balaam is a figure from the book of Numbers, a prophet hired to curse Israel who ended up prevented by God from doing so — here he is cited as an example of someone who loved “the wages of unrighteousness,” meaning he let himself be driven by payment rather than faithfulness.
2 Peter 2:16The episode of the mute donkey speaking with “man’s voice” recalls the story, also in Numbers, of an animal that reportedly stopped Balaam from going ahead with a mistaken action — cited here as something that corrected the prophet’s madness before he could cause greater harm.
2 Peter 2:17Uses images of disappointment: a well without water or a cloud without rain promise something they don’t deliver — just as these false teachers promise spiritual wisdom without having anything real to offer.
2 Peter 2:18Explains the tactic of these false teachers: grand, empty speeches used to lure back into error people who were just beginning to leave that kind of life behind.
2 Peter 2:19Points out the central irony: they sell freedom, yet are themselves slaves to their own vices — the text defines slavery as being dominated by whatever controls a person’s behavior.
2 Peter 2:20Warns of the risk of falling back after having known the faith: returning to an old error after having escaped it leaves a person in a worse situation than if they had never known the right path at all.
2 Peter 2:21Reinforces the previous point with a direct comparison: as strange as it may sound, the text says it would be better never to have known the truth than to know it and later abandon it.
2 Peter 2:22The proverb of the “dog” that returned to its own vomit, and the washed sow that returns to wallowing in the mire, describes people who, even after knowing a better path, go back to old behaviors — not a direct biblical quotation, but a popular saying used to illustrate the point.

Chapters

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