for if you are possess'd of these virtues and improve therein, they will prevent the knowledge you have of our Lord Jesus Christ from being useless to others, and unprofitable to yourselves.

and spared not the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

and if God also condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by reducing them to ashes, thereby condemning them to catastrophic destruction, and making them an example to other ungodly people in the future;

Since all this is so, the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from temptation, and on the other hand how to keep the unrighteous under punishment in readiness for the Day of Judgement,

[This fate will come upon] those people especially who corrupt themselves with physical desires and despise being ruled by others. They are daring, self-willed, and are not afraid to speak against glorious beings [i.e., angels],

But these men, like beasts without reason, whose natural use is to be taken and put to death, crying out against things of which they have no knowledge, will undergo that same destruction which they are designing for others;

They suffer wrong themselves for doing wrong to other people. They consider it [especially] pleasurable to carry on their drunken revellings, [even] during the daytime. They become blots and blemishes [i.e., like spoiled food] in your fellowship meal, as they revel in their deceitful behavior.

Their eyes are filled with sexual lust, and they are never satisfied when it comes to sinning. They entice unstable people and have hearts trained to be greedy [i.e., they continually desire the possessions of others]. [In this condition] they are under God's curse.

whilst they promise others liberty, they themselves are slaves to their corrupt passions. for he that is vanquished, is a slave to the conqueror.

In them is verified the truth of the proverb, "A dog turns back to what he has vomited"; and of that other proverb, "A sow that has washed herself goes back to wallow in the mire."

as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; wherein are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unstedfast wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.