False teachers
1 ① Just as there have been false prophets in the midst of the people of Israel, so will there be false teachers among you. They will introduce harmful sects and, by denying the Master who saved them, they will bring upon themselves sudden perdition. 2Many, nonetheless, will imitate their vices and because of them the Way of Truth will be discredited. 3They will take advantage of you with deceitful words for the sake of money. But the judgement made upon them long ago is not idle, and the destruction awaiting them is not asleep.
4In fact, God did not pardon the angels who sinned but cast them into hell, confining them in the dark pits, keeping them there until the Day of Judgment. 5Neither did he pardon the ancient world when he unleashed the waters of the flood upon the world of wicked people, but protected only Noah, the preacher of righteousness along with seven others. 6God also condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, reducing them to ashes, to serve as a warning to the wicked in the future. 7But he saved Lot, a good man deeply afflicted by the unbridled conduct of those vicious people. 8For Lot, a righteous man who lived in their midst, suffered day after day in the goodness of his heart as he saw and heard of their crimes. 9So, then, the Lord knows how to free from trial those who serve him and keep the wicked for punishment on the Day of Judgment.
10He will do this especially for certain people who follow the baser desires of their nature and despise the Lord’s majesty. Proud and daring they are not afraid of insulting fallen spirits 11while the angels, who are superior to them in strength and power, do not permit themselves any injurious accusation in the presence of the Lord.
12Those people are like irrational animals born to be caught and killed; after they have slandered what they cannot understand, they will end like animals 13and they will suffer the repayment of their wickedness. They delight in giving themselves to deprivation even in the daytime; they are deceiving you even when they are sharing your table. 14With their eyes always looking for adultery, they do not tire of sinning and seducing weak souls. They are full of greed – an accursed people.
15They abandoned the right way and followed Balaam, son of Beor who was attached to what he gained from his wrong doing. 16But he was rebuked for his sin: his she-ass began to speak with a human voice, stopping the prophet in his madness. 17These people are like waterless springs, clouds driven by a storm which move swiftly into the blackest darkness.
18With their boastful and empty discourses, they encourage the lust and impure desire of those who have just freed themselves from the common errors.
19They promise freedom when they themselves are slaves of corruption: for people are slaves to whatever dominates them. 20Indeed, after being freed from worldly vices through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they returned to those vices and surrendered to them; and their present state has become worse than the first. 21It would have been better for them not to know the way of holiness than, knowing it, to turn away from the sacred doctrine that they had been taught. 22In their case these proverbs are relevant: “The dog turns back to its own vomit,” and: “Hardly has the pig been washed than it again wallows in the mud.”
- 2 p 2,1 This chapter dealing with false masters repeats, in part, the threats found in the Letter of Jude.
