What Does 2 Peter 2:12 Mean?

(12) **But these, as natural brute beasts.**—Omit “natural.” This verse appears to tell strongly in favour of the priority of our Epistle. The literary form of Jude 1:10, is so very superior; the antithesis (quite wanting here) between abusing what they cannot know and misusing what they cannot help knowing is so telling, and would be so easily remembered, that it is improbable that a writer who was willing to adopt so much would not have adopted in this respect also; and whichever writer is second, it is evident that he was willing to adopt his predecessor’s material almost to any extent. On the other hand, there is nothing improbable in a writer who knew this verse improving upon it by writing Jude 1:10. The verses, similar as they are in much of their wording, are very different in their general drift. Jude 1:10, is simply an epigrammatic description of these ungodly men; this verse is a denunciation of final ruin against them. **Made to be taken and destroyed.**—Literally, *born naturally for capture and destruction. “*Natural” comes in better here as a kind of adverb than as an additional epithet to beasts. The force of it is that these animals cannot help themselves—it is their nature to rush after what will prove their ruin; but the false teachers voluntarily seek their own destruction against nature. This verse contains one of the repetitions noticed above (see on 2Peter 2:7) as characteristic of this Epistle. The word for “destruction” and “corruption” is one and the same in the Greek, the destroying being literal in the first case, moral in the second. Moreover, the word for “perish” is from the same root. “Like brutes born for capture and *destruction, *these men shall be *destroyed* in their *destruction.*” But such a translation would be misleading in English. **Shall utterly perish.**—A reading of higher authority gives us, *shall even perish.* **In their own corruption.**—“Own” may be omitted. Their present evil life anticipates and contains within itself the elements of their final destruction. Thus they “bring it upon themselves” (2Peter 2:1). The right division of the sentences here cannot be decided with certainty; the Apostle hurries on, in the full flood of his denunciation, without paying much attention to the precise form of his language. On the whole, it seems best to place only a comma at the end of 2Peter 2:12, with a full stop or colon at “unrighteousness,” and to make what follows part of the long sentence, of which the main verb is “are gone astray” in 2Peter 2:15.