3:13a
while: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as while is the common Greek conjunction de. Most scholars and English versions interpret this word as indicating a contrast between the godly people in 3:12 and the evil people in 3:13.
evil men and imposters: The two terms evil men and impostors refer back to the false teachers. Scholars disagree about how these terms are related. The interpretations are:
(1) These two terms describe two separate groups of people. For example, the New Living Translation (2004 Revision) says:
But evil people and impostors will flourish.
See also Berean Standard Bible, New International Version (2011 Revision), Good News Translation, Revised Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, Revised English Bible, King James Version, God’s Word, NET Bible.
(2) These two terms refer to the same group of people: the evil men are also impostors. So these two nouns express a single idea. For example, the Contemporary English Version says:
evil people who pretend to be what they are not
See also New Jerusalem Bible and New Century Version.
It is recommended that you follow interpretation (1).
imposters: An impostor is a person who pretends to be someone that he is not in order to deceive other people. A synonym for this term is “deceivers.”
go from bad to worse: Paul did not specify in what way these men would continually become worse. He probably was referring to their moral lives and to their teaching. Make the translation of this portion of the verse as general as possible.
3:13b
deceiving: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as deceiving also means “misleading.” The implied object for the verb deceiving is “other people.”
and being deceived: The text does not say who deceives the evil men and impostors. It is probably “other people,” but would not be the same group of people that they deceived.
© 2003 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.