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2 Peter 2

Chapter 2 in 30 seconds

Fake teachers are coming, and they are greedy, proud and good at sounding spiritual. God judged the fallen angels, the flood world and Sodom, but He rescued Noah and Lot. These teachers are like Balaam, who got scolded by his own donkey. A dog goes back to its vomit, and a washed pig heads straight back to the mud.

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In this chapterThe Big QuestionWhat Hesiod Wrote · after verse 10 The Big QuestionWhat Ahiqar Said · after verse 22 Field Notes · ArchaeologyThe Ahiqar Papyrus · after verse 22

Deliverance from False Prophets// Jude 1:3–16

¹Now there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ²Many will follow in their depravity, and because of them the way of truth will be defamed. ³In their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with deceptive words. The longstanding verdict against them remains in force, and their destruction does not sleep.

2PE 2:1[PROPHECY]There will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them... many will follow their destructive ways → HISTORY: False teachers soon spread, like the Gnostics Irenaeus wrote against about AD 180. Later Arius taught Jesus was a created being, and the Council of Nicaea rejected this in AD 325.
2PE 2:1[NOTE]2 PETER AND JUDE. 2:1 to 3:3 shares a lot with Jude 4 to 18: false teachers, angels, Sodom, Balaam, waterless springs and scoffers. Most scholars think Peter used Jude; some think Jude used Peter, or both used a common source. Peter leaves out Jude's quotes from 1 Enoch. THE MASTER WHO BOUGHT THEM. Arminians say this shows Christ died for everyone, even people who fall away. Calvinists say it describes how these teachers claimed to be bought, or echoes God buying Israel, Deuteronomy 32:6.

⁴For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell, placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; ⁵if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; ⁶if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction, reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly; ⁷and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless ⁸(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— ⁹if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

2PE 2:4[DEMONIC]God did not spare the angels who sinned but cast them into chains of darkness
2PE 2:4[NOTABLE]Peter and Jude both seem to know the story in 1 Enoch 6 to 16, where angels sinned with human women and were locked up until the judgment. Genesis 6 does not say this outright, but many Jews in their day believed it.
2PE 2:4[NOTE]HELL. The Greek verb means sent to Tartarus, the only time it is used in the Bible. See What Hesiod Wrote. TEXT. Some copies say chains of darkness, others pits of darkness; the two Greek words look almost alike.
2PE 2:5[ALLUDES TO]Refers to ← GEN 7:1; 7:23
2PE 2:6[ALLUDES TO]Refers to ← GEN 19:24-25
2PE 2:7[ALLUDES TO]Refers to ← GEN 19:16
2PE 2:9[NOTABLE]If God rescued Noah and Lot, He can rescue you.

¹⁰Such punishment is specially reserved for those who indulge the corrupt desires of the flesh and despise authority. Bold and self-willed, they are unafraid to slander glorious beings. ¹¹Yet not even angels, though greater in strength and power, dare to bring such slanderous charges against them before the Lord.

2PE 2:11[MIRACLE]Angels, though greater in strength and power, do not slander

The Big Question

What Hesiod Wrote

Tartarus, About 700 BC

Hesiod, Theogony 713 to 735 · 2 Peter 2:4 · Jude 6

WHY THIS IS HERE: In 2:4 Peter says God cast the angels who sinned deep into hell. The Greek verb is tartaroo, to send to Tartarus. It is the only time this word appears in the Bible. Greek readers knew Tartarus from their oldest stories.
WHO HESIOD WAS: Hesiod was a Greek farmer and poet who lived about 700 BC, around the time of Isaiah. His poem the Theogony tells how the Greek gods were born and how Zeus beat the older gods, the Titans, and locked them away. He did not know the God of Israel.
WHAT HE WROTE: Here is the whole passage, Theogony lines 713 to 735, in the English translation by Hugh Evelyn White, 1914. Cottus, Briareos and Gyes are giants with a hundred hands who fought for Zeus.
THEOGONY 713 TO 735: And amongst the foremost Cottus and Briareos and Gyes insatiate for war raised fierce fighting: three hundred rocks, one upon another, they launched from their strong hands and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and hurled them beneath the wide-pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains when they had conquered them by their strength for all their great spirit, as far beneath the earth as heaven is above earth; for so far is it from earth to Tartarus. For a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth. Round it runs a fence of bronze, and night spreads in triple line all about it like a neck-circlet, while above grow the roots of the earth and unfruitful sea. There by the counsel of Zeus who drives the clouds the Titan gods are hidden under misty gloom, in a dank place where are the ends of the huge earth. And they may not go out; for Poseidon fixed gates of bronze upon it, and a wall runs all round it on every side. There Gyes and Cottus and great-souled Obriareus live, trusty warders of Zeus who holds the aegis.

What It Tells Us · Why Peter Said Tartarus

2 Peter 2:4 · Jude 6 · Genesis 6:1 to 4 · 1 Enoch 20:2 · Job 41:32

A FAMOUS PRISON: To Greeks, Tartarus was the deepest place there is, far below Hades, a locked prison for rebels against heaven, bound in chains and darkness. Homer says it lies as far below Hades as heaven is above the earth.
JEWS USED THE WORD TOO: Jews who spoke Greek borrowed it. The Greek Old Testament uses Tartarus in Job 41:32. The Greek text of 1 Enoch 20:2 says the angel Uriel is set over Tartarus. Josephus and Philo use the word as well.
THE ANGELS WHO SINNED: Peter and Jude 6 both say these angels are kept in chains of darkness until judgment, right before they mention Noah's flood. That matches 1 Enoch 6 to 16, where the angels of Genesis 6 are bound under the earth until the last day. See Spirits in Prison in 1 Peter.
WHAT PETER MEANT: Peter is not saying the Greek myths were true. He uses a word his readers knew for the worst prison imaginable, the way we might say someone was sent to Alcatraz.
TARTARUS, HADES OR GEHENNA?: Many teachers say the Bible uses three different words. Hades is the place of the dead. Gehenna is the place of final punishment, Mark 9:43. Tartarus, here, is a holding prison for fallen angels until judgment. Others think the words overlap.
WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE: Hesiod's Titans are not Peter's angels. The two stories share a picture of rebels locked in a dark prison, not a source.

¹²These men are like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be captured and destroyed. They blaspheme in matters they do not understand, and like such creatures, they too will be destroyed. 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.

2PE 2:13[NOTE]TEXT. Most copies say reveling in their deceptions. Some old copies say in their love feasts, like Jude 12; the two Greek words differ by one letter.
2PE 2:14[HEART]False teachers have trained their hearts in greed, like an athlete in training.

¹⁵They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, 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.

2PE 2:15[DEMONIC]Balaam son of Beor, the hired diviner, loved the wages of wickedness
2PE 2:16[MIRACLE]Balaam's donkey spoke with a man's voice

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.

2PE 2:19[NOTABLE]False freedom is the worst kind of slavery.

²⁰If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, 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,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”

2PE 2:20[NOTABLE]Knowing the way and turning back is worse than never knowing it.
2PE 2:22[QUOTES]Direct ← PROV 26:11
2PE 2:22[NOTE]TWO PROVERBS. The dog is Proverbs 26:11. The washed pig is not in the Bible. See What Ahiqar Said.

The Big Question

What Ahiqar Said

The Washed Pig

The Story of Ahiqar · 2 Peter 2:22 · Proverbs 26:11 · Tobit 1:21 to 22

TWO PROVERBS: 2:22 quotes two sayings. A dog returns to its vomit is Proverbs 26:11. A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud is not in the Bible at all.
WHO AHIQAR WAS: The Story of Ahiqar is about a wise royal adviser in Assyria, under Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, about 700 to 670 BC. He adopts his nephew Nadan and trains him, but Nadan betrays him and has him sentenced to death. Ahiqar hides, is saved, and later scolds Nadan with a long string of sayings that begin, My son.
WHAT HE SAID: Here are Ahiqar's words to Nadan from the Syriac version of the story, in the English translation by J. Rendel Harris, The Story of Ahikar, second edition, Cambridge, 1913, page 125. Thou and thee are old English for you.
THE STORY OF AHIQAR, SYRIAC: My son, thou hast been to me like the swine that had been to the baths, and when it saw a muddy ditch, went down and washed in it, and cried to his companions, ‘Come and wash.’
OTHER VERSIONS: The story was copied in many languages. The Armenian and Slavonic versions tell the same picture of a pig taken to the bath that goes right back to the mud.
WHO NOTICED: In his 1913 introduction Harris argued that this saying explains the second proverb in 2 Peter, so the sow that went to the bath.
IN THE BIBLE TOO: Ahiqar shows up by name in the book of Tobit, as Tobit's nephew who served the king of Assyria, Tobit 1:21 to 22 and 14:10.

Field Notes · Archaeology

The Ahiqar Papyrus

From Elephantine, Egypt

2 Peter 2:22 · Tobit 1:21 to 22 · Jeremiah 44:1

Part of the Aramaic Story of Ahiqar on papyrus, from Elephantine, Egypt, 400s BC. Neues Museum, Berlin. Photo Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, CC BY SA 4.0.

WHAT IT IS: Pieces of a papyrus scroll with the Story of Ahiqar and his sayings, written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. It is the oldest copy of the story known.
HOW OLD IT IS: It was written in the late 400s BC. The scribe reused an older papyrus; under the story, an erased Egyptian customs list from about 475 BC can still be read.
WHERE IT WAS FOUND: On Elephantine, an island in the Nile in southern Egypt, dug up by German archaeologists from 1906 to 1908. It is now in Berlin.
WHO READ IT: Elephantine was home to a colony of Jewish soldiers serving the Persian king. They had their own temple to the God of Israel there. Their letters were found too, including one from about 407 BC asking for help to rebuild that temple. Jeremiah 44:1 speaks of Jews living in southern Egypt in his day.
WHAT IT SAYS: Ahiqar's story and wise sayings, like: Do not let a word go out of your mouth until you have weighed it. Some sayings sound like the book of Proverbs.
WHY IT MATTERS HERE: Jews were reading Ahiqar 500 years before Peter, so his sayings were well known among them. That helps explain how one of them ended up as a proverb in 2:22.
WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE: The washed pig saying is not on the surviving pieces of this old papyrus. It is known from later copies of the story, in Syriac, Armenian and other languages. Pigs going back to the mud was also a common picture; the Greek thinker Heraclitus said pigs delight in mud.

CONFIDENCE: HIGH FOR THE PAPYRUS · THE PIG SAYING IS FROM LATER COPIES

2 Peter 2

Deliverance from False Prophets// Jude 1:3–16

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