MODERN LITERAL VERSION

2:1 But false prophets happened to be also among the people, as false teachers will also be among you*, who will smuggle in sects of destruction, denying even the Master that bought them, bringing quick destruction upon themselves.
2:2 And many will follow their unbridled-lusts, because of whom the way of the truth will be blasphemed .
2:3 And in their greed, they will be merchants of you* with fabricated words; to whom the condemnation from long-ago is not idle and their destruction will not slumber.

2:4 For* if God did not spare messengers who sinned, but threw them into hell and gave them to restraints of blackness, to be kept *for judgment;
2:5 and if he did not spare the ancient world, but kept Noah, the eighth person spared, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
2:6 and if by incinerating the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he condemned them to catastrophe, having made them an example for those who are about to be ungodly;
2:7 and if he rescued righteous Lot, who had been subjugated by the conduct of the immoral in their unbridled-lusts
2:8 (for* that righteous man, who was dwelling with them, was tormenting his righteous soul by seeing and hearing their lawless works day by day).
2:9 The Lord knows how to rescue the devout out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous to the day of judgment to be punished;
2:10 and especially those who conduct-themselves after the flesh in the lust of defilement and despise lordship.
Daring and self-willed, they do not tremble to blaspheme heavenly glories;
2:11 where messengers, ( though being greater in strength and power), do not bring a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord.
2:12 But these men are like natural unreasoning creatures, having been born *for apprehension and corruption, blaspheming in what they are ignorant of and in their corruption they will be utterly corrupted.
2:13 They are getting the wages of unrighteousness; those who deem it a sensual-delight to be carousing in the day light. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their own acts of deceitfulness, they feast sumptuously alongside you*,
2:14 having eyes full of an adulteress and unceasing sin; enticing unstable souls; having a heart exercised in greed; children of the curse;
2:15 leaving the straight way. They were misled, having followed the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved* the wages of unrighteousness;
2:16 but he had his reproof from his own violation of the law: when a voiceless donkey spoke with a human voice and did forbid the insanity of the prophet.

2:17 These people are waterless springs and clouds driven by a gale to whom the blackness of darkness has been kept forever.
2:18 For* speaking flattering-words of futility, they entice with the lusts of the flesh and with unbridled-lusts, those who really had escaped from those who conduct themselves in error.
2:19 They are promising them freedom, while they themselves are* bondservants of corruption. For* in what someone has been succumbed, in this he is also enslaved.
2:20 For* if they, having escaped the defilements of the world with the full knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but are again entangled and succumbed in these things, the last state has become worse with them than the first.
2:21 For* it was better for them to have not known fully the way of righteousness, than, having fully known it, to turn back from the holy commandment given to them.
2:22 But it has befallen them according to the true proverb, ‘The dog turning to his own vomit again,' and the sow that had bathed to wallowing in the mud. {Prov. 26:11}