1But there arose false prophets also among the people, as among you also there shall be false teachers, who shall secretly bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2And many shall follow their lascivious doings; by reason of whom the way of the truth shall be spoken of as evil. 3And in covetousness they shall with feigned words exploit you: whose sentence now from of old is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber. 4For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved to judgment; 5and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, having made them an example to those who should live ungodly; 7and delivered righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked 8(for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, tormented his righteous soul from day to day with their lawless deeds): 9the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment to the day of judgment; 10but chiefly those who walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement, and despise dominion. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble to revile dignitaries: 11whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. 12But these, as creatures without reason, born mere animals to be taken and destroyed, reviling in matters of which they are ignorant, shall in their destroying surely be destroyed, 13suffering wrong as the wages of wrong-doing; men who count it pleasure to revel in the day-time, spots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you; 14having eyes full of adultery, and who cannot cease from sin; enticing unstable souls; having a heart exercised in covetousness; children of cursing; 15forsaking the right way, they went astray, having followed the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of wrong-doing; 16but he was rebuked for his own transgression: a mute donkey spoke with a man’s voice and restrained the madness of the prophet. 17These are springs without water, and mists driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved. 18For, uttering great swelling words of vanity, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by lasciviousness, those who are just escaping from those who live in error; 19promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for by whom a man is overcome, by the same he is also brought into bondage. 20For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Yeshua Messiah, they are again entangled in it and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turning to his own vomit again, and the sow that had washed to wallowing in the mire.