2:14a

Their eyes are full of adultery: The literal meaning of the Greek is “eyes full of an adulteress.” This may mean:

(1) They are always looking for a woman who is willing to have sex with them, or

(2) They cannot look at any woman without wanting to have sex with her.

It is recommended that you follow the first interpretation (1).

2:14b

their desire for sin is never satisfied: They never get tired of sinning. Here is another way to translate this:

they never stop sinning (New International Version (2011 Revision))

2:14c

they seduce the unstable: Because of the wrong things they were teaching and the way they were behaving, these false teachers persuaded people who were not strong Christians to give up the true way Christ taught them to live and to follow them in the wrong way. Some other ways to translate “unstable people” are “people who are not sure about what they believe about Jesus,” or “people who quickly change their thinking,” or “people whose loyalty to Christ is weak.”

2:14d

accursed children: Literally the Greek says “children of a curse.” This is a way of saying they are people whom God has cursed. What Peter implied by these words is that these false teachers were extremely wicked, so wicked that God had cursed them. People usually think it is wrong to curse anyone. But this verse does not mean that God has done something wrong. It means that God has declared that these people will go to hell and he will punish them there because they have sinned against him. You must translate these words carefully. If in your language the word for cursing always means doing something evil, it would be better to say “God will punish them.”

2:14e

hearts trained in greed: The literal meaning of the Greek is “having been trained in greed.” The verb “to train” usually refers to a person training himself for a race. Here these false teachers trained themselves to become more and more greedy.

greed: This means “desiring too strongly to have more and more of something.”

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.