What Does 2 Peter 2:13 Mean?

(13) **And shall receive.**—Literally, *about to receive* (as they are). (Comp. 1Peter 1:9; 1Peter 5:4; see also *Epistle of Barnabas, *iv. 12.) **As they that count.**—We must begin a fresh sentence, and somewhat modify the translation. “To riot” is too strong; the word means “delicate fare, dainty living, luxury,” and if the exact meaning be retained, this will necessitate a change of “in the day time.” For though “rioting in the day time” makes good sense—revelry even among professed pleasure seekers being usually confined to the night (1Thessalonians 5:7)—“dainty fare in the day time” does not seem to have much point. The meaning is, perhaps, “for the day,” without thought for the morrow, *counting luxury for the moment a pleasure*—the doctrine of the Cyrenaics and the instinct of “brute beasts.” In the *Shepherd* of Hermas (*Sim. VI.* iv. 4) there is a passage which may possibly be an echo of this: “The time of luxury and deceit is one hour, but the hours of torment have the power of thirty days; if, then, a man luxuriates for one day,” &c. &c. (See below on 2Peter 2:15; 2Peter 2:20; 2Peter 3:5.) **Sporting themselves.**—The word is a compound of the one just translated “luxury”; hence *luxuriating.* It is worth noting that the words for “spots and blemishes” exactly correspond to the words translated “without blemish and without spot” in 1Peter 1:19. (See below on 2Peter 3:14.) **With their own deceivings**.—Better, *in their deceits, *if this is the right reading. But both here and in Jude 1:12, the reading is uncertain, authorities being divided between *agapai, *“love-feasts,” and *apatai, *“deceits.” In Jude the balance on purely critical grounds is decidedly in favour of “love-feasts;” here (though much less decidedly) in favour of “deceits.” In Jude the context confirms the reading “love-feasts;” here the context is neutral, or slightly inclines to “love-feasts,” to which “while they feast with you” must in any case refer. But if “love-feasts” be right in Jude (and this is so probable that we may almost assume it), this in itself is strong support to the same reading here. Whichever writer is prior, so strange a change from “deceits” to “love-feasts” would hardly have been made deliberately; whereas, in copying mechanically, the interchange might easily be made, the words being so similar. The change from “spots” to “rocks,” if such a change has been deliberately made by either writer (see on Jude 1:12), would not be parallel to a change between “deceits” and “love-feasts.” The one is a mere variation of the metaphor, the other an alteration of the meaning. In 2Thessalonians 2:10 there is possibly an intentional play upon the similarity of these two words.