What Does 2 Peter 2:14 Mean?
They have eyes full of adultery and cannot rest from missing the mark. They lure unsteady living souls, each with a heart trained in grasping for more, children under the curse.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:THE KEY
The verse exposes appetite as a practiced craft: eyes fix on adultery, and a trained heart turns desire into bait.
THE MEANING
The passage makes a gaze more than a passing glance: it is saturated with adultery, and sin has become a pattern that does not cease. A heart trained in greed uses enticement to draw in living souls who lack firm footing. It names this predatory way of being as cursed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that desire remains harmless as long as it stays in the eyes: here, what the eyes fix on trains the heart and shapes what it draws others toward.
THE ROOT
γεγυμνασμένην
gegymnasmenēn
GROWS FROM
γυμνάζω
gymnazō
To train or exercise through repeated practice.
The Greek form describes a heart that has been trained and remains trained. Greed appears here as a practiced disposition: repeated exercise has made it ready to act.
ALSO GROWS
gymnazō: Train, exercise.
γυμνάζω
This is the verb family behind “exercised”; the heart is pictured as conditioned through practice.
gymnasia: Exercise, training.
γυμνασία
The related noun makes the same practice-and-conditioning sense visible beyond this verse.
δελεάζοντες
deleazontes
GROWS FROM
δελεάζω
deleazō
To entice or catch with bait.
“lure” in this verse is deleazontes. The word carries the image of baiting a catch. These desires do not remain private: they become lures that draw other people into the same pattern.
ALSO GROWS
deleazō: Entice with bait; lure.
δελεάζω
This is the verb used here for drawing living souls in.
deleār: Bait, lure.
δέλεαρ
The related noun makes the image concrete: enticement works by presenting something that catches its target.
ἀστηρίκτους
astērik-tous
GROWS FROM
στηρίζω
stērizō
To establish, make firm, or strengthen.
“unsteady” in this verse is astērik-tous. “Unstable” is formed against the idea of being established or made firm. The bait finds living souls without steady footing, exposing how vulnerability and enticement meet in this passage.
ALSO GROWS
stērizō: Establish, strengthen, make firm.
στηρίζω
This is the firmness that the word “unstable” lacks.
astērik-tos: Unestablished, unsteady, unstable.
ἀστήρικτος
This is the related adjective in the verse, describing the footing of those being enticed.
THE PATTERN
What is repeatedly practiced trains the heart, and desire can then draw people into its pattern through enticement.
With the multitude of her instruction she bends him; with the smoothings of her lips she pushes him.But each one is tested by his own craving, dragged out and lured.But push away the trodden stories of old women, and train yourself toward awe.THE THREAD
But each one is tested by his own craving, dragged out and lured.James uses the same Greek baiting verb: here desire lures other living souls, while in James a person is enticed by their own desire. The shared word reveals desire as both the hook one casts and the bait one follows.
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