2 Peter 2:12-22

Holman Christian Standard Bible

¹² But these people, like irrational animals—creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed—speak blasphemies about things they don’t understand, and in their destruction they too will be destroyed, ¹³ suffering harm as the payment for unrighteousness. They consider it a pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, delighting in their deceptions^[a] as they feast with you. ¹⁴ They have eyes full of adultery^(A) and are always looking for sin. They seduce unstable people and have hearts trained in greed. Children under a curse!^{(B) 15} They have gone astray by abandoning the straight path^(C) and have followed the path of Balaam,^(D) the son of Bosor,^[b] who loved the wages of unrighteousness^{(E) 16} but received a rebuke for his transgression: A donkey that could not talk spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s irrationality.^(F)

¹⁷ These people are springs without water, mists driven by a whirlwind. The gloom of darkness has been reserved for them.^{(G) 18} For by uttering boastful, empty words,^(H) they seduce, with fleshly desires and debauchery, people who have barely escaped^[c] from those who live in error. ¹⁹ They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them.^{(I) 20} For if, having escaped the world’s impurity through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,^(J) they are again entangled in these things and defeated, the last state is worse for them than the first.^{(K) 21} For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness^(L) than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy command^(M) delivered^(N) to them.^{(O) 22} It has happened to them according to the true proverb: A dog returns to its own vomit,^(P)[d] and, “a sow, after washing itself, wallows in the mud.”