2 Peter 2

1False prophets also arose among the people, as false teachers will also be among you, who will surreptitiously bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.

2And many will follow their licentious ways, because of whom the way of truth will be defamed.

3In greed they will exploit you with fabricated words; the judgment long ago prepared for them does not delay, and their destruction does not slumber.

4For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell in chains of darkness and delivered them to be kept for judgment,

5and did not spare the ancient world, but guarded Noah, the eighth, a herald of righteousness, bringing a flood upon the world of the ungodly.

6And by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes through their overthrow, he condemned them, having appointed them an example to those about to live ungodly.

7and rescued righteous Lot, tormented by the wanton conduct of the lawless.

8For the righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul day by day by seeing and hearing lawless deeds.

9The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation and to hold the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

10but chiefly those who follow the flesh in defiling lust and scorn dominion—daring, self-willed, they do not tremble to blaspheme glories.

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

12But these, like brute beasts born by nature for capture and destruction, blaspheme what they do not understand and will be destroyed in their corruption.

13receiving harm as the wages of unrighteousness and counting daytime revelry a pleasure, spots and blemishes reveling in their deceptions while feasting with you.

14They have eyes filled with adultery and cannot stop sinning, enticing unsteady souls; they have a heart trained in greed—accursed children.

15Forsaking the straight way, they went astray, following the path of Balaam, son of Bosor, who loved the reward of wrongdoing.

16But he received a rebuke for his own iniquity: a mute donkey spoke with a man's voice and restrained the prophet's madness.

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

18For speaking boastful vanities, they entice through desires of the flesh and wantonness those barely escaping from the ones living in error.

19They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whomever anyone is overcome, by that one he is also enslaved.

20For if they escaped the defilements of the world through knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but these become entangled again and overcome, the end has become worse for them than the beginning.

21For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn away from the holy commandment given them.

22The true proverb has happened to them: a dog returns to its own vomit, and a sow that has washed to wallowing in mire.