Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Peter · About this commentary
Unreasoning Creatures
2 Peter 2:12-14
12 But these, as unreasoning creatures, born natural animals to be taken and destroyed, speaking evil in matters about which they are ignorant, will in their destroying surely be destroyed, · WEB
The portrait sharpens: men who rail at what they have not understood, and who bring the appetite of a feast into the congregation's own table.
As unreasoning creatures, born natural animals to be taken and destroyed, speaking evil in matters about which they are ignorant. The charge is not stupidity but the substitution of instinct for judgment — reacting where thought was required, and railing at what they never examined.
Verse 13 places them inside the community, which is what makes the passage grim rather than merely censorious. They revel in the daytime and feast with you — spots and blemishes at the shared meal, the same picture Jude gives of hidden reefs in the love feasts Jude 1:12. The words for spots are the negatives of what the letter will later ask of its readers, who are to be found without defect and blameless 2 Peter 3:14.
Verse 14 completes the portrait in three strokes, and each names a faculty ruined by practice. Eyes full of adultery, unable to stop. A heart trained in greed — the verb is the one used of an athlete's conditioning, so the covetousness is a discipline rather than a lapse. And between them, the actual harm: enticing unsettled souls, which is why the letter treats this as an emergency rather than a scandal.
settled What this mark means