Verse 22
Peter compared the false teachers to unclean dogs and swine (cf. Matthew 7:6; Proverbs 26:11). Practice betrays nature. Dogs return to corruption that comes from within them: vomit. Pigs return to filth that they find outside themselves, even though their handlers may clean them up occasionally. [Note: See McGee, 5:741-44, for his "parable of the prodigal pig."] The false teachers in view do both things.
"The sense is, not that the creature has washed itself clean in water (so apparently the R.V.), still less that it has been washed clean (as A.V.), and then returns to the mud; but that having once bathed in filth it never ceases to delight in it." [Note: Bigg, p. 287.]
"Instead of being sheep, they were pigs and dogs . . ." [Note: Wiersbe, 2:460.]
Peter’s statement about the false teachers in this verse is his most derogatory of them, and it brings his warning to avoid these heretics to its climax.
One writer argued that, "Gnosticism, in whatever stage or form, had little or nothing to do with these communities." [Note: Michael Desjardins, "The Portrayal of the Dissidents in 2 Peter and Jude: Does It Tell Us More About the ’Godly’ Than the ’Ungodly’?" Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30 (June 1987):95.] However, another scholar wrote in his excellent commentary that he saw some Gnostic influence. [Note: Kelly, pp. 338 and 349.] Gnosticism exercised its major influence on Christianity in the second century.
Be the first to react on this!
