2 Peter 2:17 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

These are wells without water, &c. Pretenders to knowledge and piety, but really destitute thereof; clouds Promising fertilizing showers of instructive and edifying doctrine, but yielding none; carried with a tempest Driven by the violence of their own lusts from one error and vice to another; to whom the mist Ο ζοφος, the blackness; of darkness is reserved for ever Eternal darkness. Frequently in Scripture the word darkness signifies a state of disconsolate misery; here it denotes the punishment of the wicked after the day of judgment; which our Lord also hath represented by persons being cast into outer darkness. “There being few wells and little rain in the eastern countries, for a thirsty traveller to come to a well that had no water, was a grievous disappointment; as it was also to the husbandman to see clouds arise which gave him the prospect of rain, but which, ending in a tempest, instead of refreshing, destroyed the fruits of the earth. By these comparisons the ostentation, hypocrisy, levity, and mischief of the false teachers are set forth in the strongest colours.”