2 Peter 2:12

But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed Literally, as irrational merely natural animals born for capture and destruction. A different order of the words in some MSS. justifies the rendering born by their nature. The words express a strong indignation, at first sight scarcely reconcilable with the implied protest against a railing accusation. It must be remembered however that the whole context implies a depth of infamy and impurity for which no language could well be too strong in its scornful condemnation.

speak evil of the things that they understand not Literally, speaking evil (or railing) in the things in which they are ignorant. The words point to the same form of railing as before. They present, as it were, the evil of which St Paul speaks ("intruding into those things which they have not seen," Colossians 2:18) at its opposite pole. As, on the one hand, there was the danger of an undue reverence for angelic "dignities," so, on the other, there was the peril of men acting irreverently, from the standpoint of an equally crass ignorance, and speaking of the mystery of spiritual evil, not with solemn awe, but with foolish talking and jesting.

and shall utterly perish in their own corruption We cannot improve on the English rendering, but it fails to give the emphasis which is found in the Greek from the repetition of the same root both in the noun and the verb. Literally the clause runs, they shall be corrupted in and by their corruption, i.e. in St Paul's words, of which these are in fact the echo, "they that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption" (Galatians 6:8).