OET-RV 2PET section

This is still a very early look into the unfinished text of the Open English Translation of the Bible. Please double-check the text in advance before using in public.

False teachers

2Pet 2:1–22

2:1 False teachers

2 But just like there were also false prophets among the people, so also there will be false teachers among you who will sneakily bring in destructive heresies—even denying the Master and thus bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many people will follow their gross immorality causing evil to be spoken of about the true way. 3 They will exploit you with greed and made-up words but the judgment of old won’t be idle and their destroyer won’t be sleeping.

4 Because if God didn’t spare the messengers when they sinned, but chained them in darkness and kept them to be delivered to judgement in due course, 5 [ref]and if he didn’t spare the ancient world but only preserved the eight including Noah the proclaimer of righteousness when the flood came upon the ungodly world, 6 [ref]and if he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes by a catastrophe which condemned them to being an example of what the ungodly will become, 7 [ref]and if he saved the righteous man Lot who was distressed by the gross immorality of the lawless people 8 and whose righteous soul was tormented by seeing and hearing their lawlessness day after day, 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, and knows how to keep the unrighteous people to be punished at the day of judgement, 10 especially those who follow their fleshly lusts that defile themselves and despise his Lordship.

Those bold, self-willed people don’t worry about insulting the glorious ones, 11 whereas even messengers who are greater in both strength and power don’t slander or pass the Lord’s judgement on those glorious ones. 12 But these men act like unthinking animals that are born to be captured and destroyed when they slander concerning things they know nothing about, and they will bring about their own destruction. 13 The harm they did will lead to their own harm as payment as their indulgence in broad daylight. They’ve become spots and blemishes as they feast together with you yet take joy in their deception. 14 Their eyes are full of lust for adultery and never cease to sin, and having trained their hearts in greed they entice unstable people to become their cursed offspring. 15 [ref]They have left the right path and gone astray, following the path of Balaam the son of Bosor who loved the wages of unrighteousness, 16 but he was scolded for his sin when a normally dumb donkey spoke to him with a man’s voice to stop his madness.

17 These men are like waterless fountains and like mists driven by storms, and the gloomy darkness is reserved for them 18 because they speak vane and inflated words to entice people to fleshly lusts. Those who have just escaped from the errors of their living 19 are promised freedom, but they themselves have become slaves to corruption, because whatever a person has been defeated by is what they become a slave to. 20 Because if they have escaped the defilements of the world by their knowledge of our Lord and saviour Yeshua Messiah and yet get entangled again, they are defeated and have ended up worse off than at the beginning. 21 It would have been better not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it and to turn back from the holy instruction that was passed on to them. 22 [ref]The proverb is correct in what it says and has happened to them: “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and “A sow that’s been washed wallows in the mud again.”

2:5: Gen 6:1–7:24.

2:6: Gen 19:24.

2:7: Gen 19:1-16.

2:15-16: Num 22:4-35.

2:22: Prv 26:11.

Collected OET-RV cross-references

Gen 6:1–7:24:

6:1 Humankind’s evil

6 When people began to multiply on the earth’s surface, and they were having daughters,[ref] 2 God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives. 3 Then Yahweh said, “My Spirit won’t tolerate people forever, because they are physical beings, therefore their remaining time will be 120 years.” 4 The NEFILIM were on the earth in those days and also after that, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humankind and they bore children for them. INVESTIGATE They were the mighty warriors of long ago—those famous men.[ref]

5 Then Yahweh saw that the humankind’s wickedness on the earth was extensive, and that every inclination of their inner thoughts was only evil all day long.[ref] 6 So Yahweh regretted that he had made humankind on the earth and he was deeply saddened, 7 so he said, “This humankind that I created, I will completely destroy them from the surface of the ground, along with the animals, and crawling creatures and the birds of the sky, because I regret that I made them.” 8 However, Yahweh noticed Noah and was pleased with him.

6:8 Noah makes a barge

9 This is the account of Noah: He was a man who obeyed God, blameless among the people of his time and he walked around with God.[ref] 10 Noah had three sons: Yafet (Japheth), Shem, and Ham.

11 Now God noticed that humankind was corrupt and very violent. 12 Yes, God looked at the earth, and wow, all the living creatures on the earth had corrupted their behaviour.

13 So God told Noah, “I’ve decided to put an end to all people on earth because the earth is filled with violence because of them. So listen, I myself am going to destroy all of them, along with the earth. 14 Make yourself a wooden chest[fn] out of cypress. Build rooms inside it, and seal it both inside and outside with resin. 15 These are the dimensions for it: 140m long, 23m wide, and 14m high. 16 It must have a roof, but the last half a metre between the sides and the roof should remain open. Put the door in its side, and build lower, middle, and upper decks. 17 You see, I’m going to flood the earth with water to destroy every creature that breathes. Everything that’s on the earth will die. 18 But I’ll make an agreement with you, so you must go into this chest along with your wife and sons and their wives, 19 and you must take a pair, male and female, of everything that lives into the chest to keep alive with you. 20 Pairs of every kind of bird and animal, including every kind of creature that moves on the ground, will come to you so that you keep them alive, 21 and you must take with you some of every different kind of food and store it in there for you and them to eat. 22 So Noah did that exactly as God had specified.[ref]

7:0 The global flood

7 Then Yahweh said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, because I’ve seen that you’re the only one who obeys me in this generation. 2 Take in seven male and female pairs of every kind of ‘clean’ animal, and one male and female pair of the ‘unclean’ animals, 3 as well as seven male and female pairs of every kind of flying bird in order to preserve their kinds on the earth. 4 Seven days from now I’ll send forty days and nights of rain on the earth, and I’ll eliminate every living thing that I’ve made that’s still on the ground. 5 So Noah did everything that Yahweh had instructed him to do.

6 Noah was 600 years old when the flood covered the earth, 7 and he went into the wooden chest along with his wife, his three sons and their wives, in order to escape from the floodwaters.[ref] 8 ‘Clean’ and ‘unclean’ animals, the birds, and everything that lived on the ground 9 came to Noah in male and female pairs and went into the chest, just like God had instructed Noah. 10 Then when the seven days were up, water started to flood the earth.

11 When Noah was 600 years old (and around the beginning of May), deep underwater geysers in the ocean started spouting out water, and the skies began to drop heavy rain[ref] 12 that continued day and night for forty days. 13 That was the very day that Noah and Yafet and Shem and Ham and their wives had all entered the wooden chest. 14 They had with them every kind of living creature, including every kind of livestock and every other kind of creature that lives on the land, and every kind of bird and everything else that flies. 15 They had come to Noah in order to enter the chest—two by two of every creature with the breath of life. 16 So pairs of males and females of every creature entered just as God had instructed Noah, then Yahweh closed the door and they were shut in.

17 Then the flood came onto the earth for forty days, and the water rose so that the wooden chest was lifted up right off the land. 18 The water continued to rise and get deeper on the earth, and the chest floated along on top of the water. 19 Eventually the water on the earth got so deep that all the high mountains everywhere under the sky were under water—20 in fact the water rose over seven metres above the tops of them. 21 By then every living creature that lived on the earth had drowned—birds, livestock, animals, every creature that swarms upon the earth, and all humankind. 22 Everything that had the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils, everything that lived on dry land, died. 23 That’s how Yahweh completely annihilated every living creature off the earth, including humankind and livestock and crawling creatures and even the birds. Everything was annihilated except for Noah and those with him in the floating chest, 24 and the earth remained in full flood for 150 days.

6:14 The reader might have expected the word ‘ark’ here, but sadly the Latin word ‘arca’ meaning ‘large box, chest’ led to the English word ‘ark’ being invented, and why we can’t use it here, is that now for most English readers, they picture a large boat in their minds when they hear that word. If you think about the ‘ark of the covenant’ that uses the same word, hopefully you can understand how anything like a ‘boat’ is the wrong word picture, hence we’ve gone back to translating the actual Hebrew word here.

6:1-4: Yob 1:6; 2:1.

6:4: Num 13:33.

6:5-8: Mat 24:37; Luk 17:26; 1Pe 3:20.

6:9: 2Pe 2:5.

6:22: Heb 11:7.

7:7: Mat 24:38-39; Luk 17:27.

7:11: 2Pe 3:6.

Gen 19:24:

24 Then Yahweh rained burning sulfur down onto Sodom and Gomorrah,[ref]

19:24-25: Mat 10:15; 11:23-24; Luk 10:12; 17:29; 2Pe 2:6; Yud 7.

Gen 19:1-16:

19:1 Sexual depravity in Sodom

19 So the two messengers arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting at the city gate. When Lot saw them, he got up to meet them and knelt down in front of them with his face to the ground. 2 Then he said, “Listen, my masters: Come with me to your slave’s home and wash your feet and stay the night. Then you can get up early and continue on your way.”

But they said, “No, rather we’ll just spend the night in the street.” 3 However, Lot insisted, so they followed him off the main road and went into his house. Then he prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

4 However, before they went to bed, the men of Sodom surrounded the house—there were young and old from all parts of the city—5 and they called out to Lot, “Where are the men who came to your place tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can ‘use’ them.”[ref]

6 So Lot went out to them at the entrance of the house and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “My brothers, don’t do this evil. 8 Listen, I’ve got two virgin daughters. Please let me bring them out to you and you can treat them however you like. But don’t do anything to these men, because they’ve entered my house and so I’m responsible for them.”

9 But they insisted, “Stand back!” Then they said to each other, “This guy came to stay with us, and now he’s judging us. We’ll treat you worse than them!” Then they started pushing hard against Lot and came closer to break down the door. 10 But the two visitors reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house and shut the door again. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the entrance of the house with blindness—all of them from the lowly to the prominent men—so that they gave up trying to find the door.[ref]

19:11 Lot and family leave Sodom

12 Then the men said to Lot, “Who else belongs to you here, a son-in-law or your sons or your daughters or anyone else who belongs to you in the city? Take them out from this place, 13 because we’re about to destroy it. The people have repeatedly cried out to Yahweh, so he’s sent us to destroy the city.”

14 Then Lot went out and spoke to his future sons-in-law who were engaged to his daughters, and he told them, “Hurry, get out of this place, because Yahweh is going to destroy the city!” But they thought he was just joking.

15 At dawn the next day, the two messengers urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who’re here, so that all of you won’t be swept away in the punishment of the city.” 16 When Lot hesitated, because of Yahweh’s mercy for him, the men grabbed his hand and his wife’s hand and the hands of their daughters, and led them out beyond the edge of the city.[ref]