2 Peter 2:13–22

¹³The harm they will suffer is the wages of their wickedness.

They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deception as they feast with you. ¹⁴Their eyes are full of adultery; their desire for sin is never satisfied; they seduce the unstable. They are accursed children with hearts trained in greed.

¹⁵They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor,^e who loved the wages of wickedness. ¹⁶But he was rebuked for his transgression by a donkey, otherwise without speech, that spoke with a man’s voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

¹⁷These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. ¹⁸With lofty but empty words, they appeal to the sensual passions of the flesh and entice those who are just escaping from others who live in error. ¹⁹They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves to depravity. For a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.

²⁰If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,^f only to be entangled and overcome by it again, their final condition is worse than it was at first. ²¹It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn away from the holy commandment passed on to them. ²²Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”^g and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”