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Lessons from the Past. [a]For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but condemned them to the chains of Tartarus[b] and handed them over to be kept for judgment;(A) [c]and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, together with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the godless world;(B) and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah [to destruction], reducing them to ashes, making them an example for the godless [people] of what is coming;(C) and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man oppressed by the licentious conduct of unprincipled people (for day after day that righteous man living among them was tormented in his righteous soul at the lawless deeds that he saw and heard), then the Lord knows how to rescue the devout from trial and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,(D)

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Footnotes

  1. 2:4–6 The false teachers will be punished just as surely and as severely as were the fallen angels (2 Pt 2:4; cf. Jude 6; Gn 6:1–4), the sinners of Noah’s day (2 Pt 2:5; Gn 7:21–23), and the inhabitants of the cities of the Plain (2 Pt 2:6; Jude 7; Gn 19:25). Whereas there are three examples in Jude 5–7 (Exodus and wilderness; rebellious angels; Sodom and Gomorrah), 2 Peter omitted the first of these, has inserted a new illustration about Noah (2 Pt 2:5) between Jude’s second and third examples, and listed the resulting three examples in their Old Testament order (Gn 6; 7; 19).
  2. 2:4 Chains of Tartarus: cf. Jude 6; other manuscripts in 2 Peter read “pits of Tartarus.” Tartarus: a term borrowed from Greek mythology to indicate the infernal regions.
  3. 2:5–10a Although God did not spare the sinful, he kept and saved the righteous, such as Noah (2 Pt 2:5) and Lot (2 Pt 2:7), and he knows how to rescue the devout (2 Pt 2:9), who are contrasted with the false teachers of the author’s day. On Noah, cf. Gn 5:32–9:29, especially 7:1. On Lot, cf. Gn 13 and 19.