What Does 2 Peter 2:3 Mean in the King James?
And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Greek pictures words as molded and people as merchandise: greed shapes speech until a person becomes the product.
THE MEANING
Greed shapes speech into a tool of extraction, reducing the hearer to profit. The verse holds that exploitation beside judgment that does not lie idle and a perishing that does not sleep. It speaks now wherever religious-sounding language conceals the conversion of people into gain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse dissolves is that persuasive religious language proves the speaker is acting for the hearer’s good.
THE ROOT
ἐμπορεύσονται
emporeusontai
GROWS FROM
ἐμπορεύομαι
emporeuomai
To trade, do business, or traffic in something.
“make merchandise” in this verse is emporeusontai. The Greek verb makes the people themselves the object of the trade. The words are not only meant to persuade; they help turn the hearers into something to profit from.
ALSO GROWS
emporos: Merchant, trader.
ἔμπορος
The merchant is the person who trades; here, that commercial role is reversed onto the hearers, who become what is traded.
emporia: Trade, commerce.
ἐμπορία
This branch makes the economic frame plain: the verse describes religious speech serving a transaction.
πλαστοῖς
plastois
GROWS FROM
πλάσσω
plássō
To mold, shape, or form.
The word translated “feigned” carries the image of something shaped or molded; in this sentence, the shaping is deceptive. English can make the words sound merely false, while the Greek evokes speech deliberately fashioned to serve the trade.
ALSO GROWS
eplasthē: Was formed.
ἐπλάσθη
The same word family can describe something being shaped; here, the words themselves are fashioned to mislead.
plasma: A thing formed or molded.
πλάσμα
This branch shows the root’s movement from shaping to the thing shaped, echoing how crafted speech makes people into objects of trade.
πλεονεξίᾳ
pleonexia
GROWS FROM
πλεονεκ-
pleonek-
Having or taking more; grasping for advantage.
“covetousness” in this verse is pleonexia. This is more than wanting wealth: the root family reaches from wanting more to taking advantage of another. It names the appetite that drives both the molded words and the trade in people.
ALSO GROWS
pleonektēs: A greedy person, one who wants more.
πλεονέκτης
The appetite is pictured as a person who keeps reaching for more.
pleonekteō: To take advantage of or defraud.
πλεονεκτέω
The desire for more becomes an act against another person, matching the verse’s movement from greed to exploitation.
THE PATTERN
When gain becomes the measure, spiritual speech becomes a vehicle for exploiting people.
The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.THE THREAD
Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:The Greek behind “buy and sell” is a form of ἐμπορεύομαι, the same verb behind “make merchandise” here. James describes trading goods for gain; Peter’s wording turns the image sharply toward people themselves becoming the object of trade.
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