Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Peter · About this commentary
Wells Without Water, Promising Liberty
2 Peter 2:17-19
17 These are wells without water, clouds driven by a storm, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever. · WEB
Two images of promise without delivery, and then the sentence that undoes the whole offer: they are selling a freedom they do not have.
These are wells without water, clouds driven by a storm. Both images are of expectation raised and disappointed, and in a dry country neither is abstract — a traveler who reaches a dry well has spent the walk. Jude uses the same pairing Jude 1:12.
Verse 18 describes the technique. Great swelling words of emptiness — sound engineered to seem substantial — used to entice people who are only just escaping from those who live in error. The targets are named precisely: not the settled, but the newly out, still unsteady on unfamiliar ground.
Then verse 19 states the offer and destroys it in one sentence. They promise them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption. The principle given is general and true outside this context: a man is brought into bondage by whoever overcomes him. Whatever masters a person owns them, and the letter's judgment is that these teachers are handing out a freedom they are personally unable to demonstrate. The Lord had put it the same way — everyone who commits sin is the servant of sin John 8:34.
settled What this mark means