2 Peter 2

1 But there were also false prophets among the people, as there will also be false teachers among you, who will bring in alongside sects of destruction, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. [a] 2 And many will follow their indecencies, and because of them the way of the truth will be blasphemed; 3 and in greed they will make merchandise of you with moulded words. For them the judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not dozing. [b]

4 For if God did not spare messengers when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus with chains of gloom and handed them over, kept for judgment; [c] 5 and did not spare an ancient world, but guarded Noah as the eighth, a herald of righteousness, when he brought a flood on a world of ungodly people; [d] 6 and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes condemned them to overthrow, having set them as an example of what is coming for the ungodly; [e] 7 and rescued righteous Lot, worn down by the way of life of lawless people in indecency — 8 for that righteous man, living among them, day after day was tormenting his righteous soul by what he saw and heard, at their lawless deeds — [f] 9 the Lord knows how to rescue the devout out of a test, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for a day of judgment, 10 and above all those who go after flesh in a desire that defiles, and who despise lordship. [g]

Bold, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme glories, 11 where messengers, who are greater in strength and power, do not bring a blaspheming judgment against them. [h] 12 But these, like unreasoning animals born by nature for capture and destruction, blaspheming in matters they do not know, will also be destroyed in their destruction, 13 wronged as the wages of wrongdoing. Counting indulgence in the daytime a pleasure, they are stains and blemishes, indulging in their deceptions while they feast together with you, [i] 14 having eyes full of an adulteress and never resting from sin, baiting unsteady souls, having a heart trained in greed — children of a curse. [j]

15 Leaving a straight way they went astray, following the way of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of wrongdoing 16 but had a rebuke for his own lawbreaking: a voiceless beast of burden, speaking with a human voice, held back the prophet’s madness. [k]

17 These are waterless springs and mists driven by a squall, for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept. [l] 18 For speaking swollen words of emptiness, they bait with fleshly desires, with indecencies, those who are barely escaping from the ones who live in error, [m] 19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whatever a person has been overcome, by this he has been enslaved. [n] 20 For if, having escaped the defilements of the world through the full knowledge of the Lord and the one who rescues, Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in these and overcome, the last things have become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them not to have come to know the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn back from the holy command handed on to them. 22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: “A dog that turns back to its own vomit,” and, “A sow that washed, to wallowing in mud.” [o]