The letter now moves from the common meals to the day-to-day behavior of the false teachers.
They have eyes full of adultery is literally “having eyes full of an adulteress,” with “adulteress” understood in a general way as referring either to the act of adultery or to adulterous women (Good News Translation “immoral women”). The inclusion of the word full indicates that they are entirely engrossed and preoccupied with what they are doing. The whole expression can then be understood in two ways:
1. Every time they look at a woman, they think of committing adultery with her, or negatively, they cannot look at a woman without thinking of themselves as being in bed with her.
2. They are always engrossed in looking for immoral women so that they can have illicit sexual relations with them.
While the first of these alternatives makes more sense, the second takes seriously the fact that the text says “adulteress,” not “adultery”; in other words it focuses on desire for the person rather than on desire for the act. Languages have varying ways to translate “immoral women.” Examples are “easy women” or “women with easy hearts.”
Insatiable means “unceasing,” “restless,” “unsatisfied.” In the Greek text insatiable for sin is connected with the previous statement and directly related to eyes, which means that not only are their eyes always looking for women with whom they can commit adultery, but they are also looking for other opportunities to commit sin. Eyes is used figuratively here to refer to the whole person, and the translator may need to express the meaning in plain terms, especially if this figurative usage of “eyes” is not natural in the language of the translation; for example, “they are never happy unless they are sinning,” or “they never stop wanting to do sinful things.”
Not only are they preoccupied with adultery and other sexual perversions, but the false teachers also entice unsteady souls. Entice comes from the world of fishing and hunting; it means “to lure with a bait,” hence Good News Translation “lead … into a trap.” In certain languages this idea is rendered idiomatically; for example, “lure the hearts of” or “seduce the hearts of.” Souls here means people, and these people are described as unsteady. This translates a word that occurs only here and in 3.16 in the whole Bible; it means “weak” (Good News Translation), “unstable,” “wavering” (Knox). The “unstable” people are those whose foundation in the Christian faith is rather weak, and who therefore can be led astray very easily, not only in their understanding of the Christian message, but also in their actions. Some identify these people as new converts in the Christian faith. Other ways of expressing this are “weak-hearted people,” “people who have little faith,” or “people who are not sure of what they believe.” The sentence may be rendered “They entice people who are not sure of what they believe to commit sin.”
In contrast to the unsteadiness of their victims, the false teachers have hearts trained, but their training is in greed. The heart is the center of emotion, will, and affection; it can be used figuratively to mean the whole person. Trained translates a participle of a verb that comes from athletics; it means “to exercise” and is used of an athlete exercising in the gymnasium and preparing to participate in athletic contests. Here it is the opposite of “unsteady,” which was used to describe the victims of the false teachers. Unfortunately, however, they are well trained not for good but for ill. The term greed is related to the earlier term insatiable; it means “avarice,” “covetousness,” and is an apt description of a person who is never satisfied and always desires to have more. Trained is a perfect participle, which means that greediness has already become a habit for these false teachers; they have become experts in taking advantage of others in order to acquire for themselves the things for which they crave. Other ways of expressing this clause are “They train their hearts or minds to be greedy,” “They train their hearts or minds to continually want what other people have,” or “They are experts in acquiring whatever they want.”
Having described the false teachers in this very disapproving manner, it is no surprise that Peter now pronounces a curse on them. The expression Accursed children is literally “children of a curse,” which is an idiom based on a Hebrew way of speaking. To be a child of something is to be included in something and share in its characteristics, as for example “children of iniquity” (Hos 10.9, KJV), which Revised Standard Version translates as “wayward people” (positioning it in verse 10 of that chapter). Therefore to be “children of a curse” means that these people share the characteristics of being accursed. A literal translation may give the wrong meaning, for it may give the idea that these people are real children when in fact they are adults.
A curse is something that one person can pronounce on another but in fact cannot bring it to pass, for a curse is always addressed to a higher power, calling on that higher power to do something bad to the person upon whom the curse is pronounced. So here the higher power invoked is most probably God (as in Good News Translation “They are under God’s curse!”), and the statement means that God is sure to punish them because of all the bad things that they have done. The expression here means the same thing as “Woe to them” in Jude 11.
An alternative translation model for this verse is:
• They are continually looking for easy women; they never stop wanting to do evil things. They seduce to commit sin the hearts of people who believe in Jesus weakly. They themselves are experts in acquiring whatever their hearts desire. Because of all the evil things they do, God will punish them.
Quoted with permission from Arichea, Daniel C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Second Letter from Peter. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .