2Pe 2:17-22 | TNotes | STEP | Summary for 2Pet 2:17-22: 2:17-22 Peter continues his description of the false teachers by explaining their effect on other people.

Summary for 2Pet 2:17-22: 2:17-22 ^a Peter continues his description of the false teachers by explaining their effect on other people.
2:18 ^b those who have barely escaped: The false teachers cleverly targeted new converts, people who had only recently committed themselves to Christ.
2:19 ^c One of the great lures of false teaching through the centuries has been the promise of freedom from authority, but such freedom is illusory (Rom 6:16 ^d). The false teachers, while reveling in their freedom from authority (see 2 Pet 2:10 ^e), were in fact slaves to sin and corruption.
2:20 ^f they are worse off than before: The false teachers or their followers had known the truth, but their deliberate rejection of that truth put them in a far worse situation than when they ignorantly lived in sin.
2:22 ^g “A dog returns to its vomit”: Dogs were not seen as friendly family pets but as wild and filthy beasts.

• “A washed pig returns to the mud”: This proverb might go back to a popular book of sayings called Ahiqar from around 500 BC, which reads, “My son, you have been to me like the pig who went into the hot bath with people of quality, and when it came out of the hot bath, it saw a filthy hole and went down and wallowed in it” (Ahiqar 8:18).

Profile: Lot
Lot was Abraham’s nephew and the ancestor of the Moabites and Ammonites. Like Abraham, Lot was born in Ur and accompanied Terah to Haran (Gen 11:27-32 ^h). After Terah’s death, he joined Abraham in journeying to Canaan and Egypt.
When Lot and Abraham returned from Egypt to Canaan, their flocks and herds grew too numerous for them to live together, so Abraham gave Lot his choice of land on which to settle. Lot chose the fertile plain of the Jordan that was like “the garden of the Lord” (Gen 13:10 ⁱ), and eventually he took up residence in Sodom. Lot’s increasing involvement with the completely corrupt cities of the plain compromised him.
While Lot lived in Sodom, four Mesopotamian kings defeated the kings of five towns in the area; in the subsequent plundering, they carried off Lot, his family, and his possessions (Gen 14:1-12 ^j). When word of this reached Abraham, he launched a rearguard action against the invaders and recovered the prisoners and property (14:13-16 ^k).
Because of the wickedness of Sodom and the neighboring city of Gomorrah, God decided to destroy these towns. He sent two angelic visitors to Lot in Sodom to encourage his departure from the doomed city (Gen 19:1-15 ^l). The city’s depravity became even more evident in an attempted homosexual attack on the visitors. Lot’s willingness to sacrifice his daughters, along with his reluctance to leave Sodom, shows how corrupt and compromised he had become. No one but his immediate family accompanied him, and his wife was destroyed when she turned back in disobedience. Soon after the destruction of Sodom, Lot’s daughters, despairing of having no husbands, got Lot drunk enough to have sexual relations with them. Their two sons, Moab and Ben-ammi, were ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites (Gen 19:30-38 ^m), two nations that became inveterate enemies of Israel (see Deut 23:3-6 ⁿ). Despite Lot’s waywardness, Peter declares that Lot was a “righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day” (see 2 Pet 2:6-9 ^o). This analysis of Lot may stem from Jewish interpretive tradition, as it is difficult to see in the Genesis account.

Passages for Further Study
Gen 11:27 ^p, 31 ^q; 12:4-5 ^r; 13:1-14 ^s; 14:12-16 ^t; 19:1-38 ^u; Deut 2:9 ^v, 17-19 ^w; Ps 83:4-8 ^x; Luke 17:28-33 ^y; 2 Pet 2:6-9 ^z