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.”