Uttering vain words they snare in the lusts of the flesh those who were just escaping (or, had actually escaped) from heathen vices, promising them liberty, while all the time they are themselves the slaves of sin. Having once been rescued from the defilements of the world, they have again become enslaved, and their last state is worse than their first; better to remain a heathen than become an apostate.
2 Peter 2:22. The first proverb is found in Proverbs 26:11; the second is, apparently, not derived from a Heb. source, and its interpretation is difficult. The sense is, not that the creature has washed itself clean in water (so apparently RV), still less that it has been washed clean (as AV), and then returns to the mud, but that, having once bathed in filth, it never ceases to delight in it (Bigg). [The objection to this view is that the illustration requires a change from filth to cleanliness, followed by a reversion to the old condition, so that the last state is worse than the first. The dog gets rid of his unwholesome food, but then hankers after it and returns to it; the sow gets rid of its dirt by washing itself and then rolls in the mud and becomes as filthy as ever. Wendland suggests that the proverb goes back to a saying of Heraclitus, which he gives in this form: Swine wash themselves more gladly in mire than in clear and clean water. (Burnet reads differently: Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.) But it is much more likely that it comes from Ahikar; the passage is rendered thus by Rendel Harris: My son, thou hast behaved like the swine which went to the bath with people of quality, and when he came out, saw a stinking drain, and went and rolled himself in it. (Smend's translation is somewhat different, but agrees in substance). A. S. P.]