As indicated in Revised Standard Version, this verse is a sort of a parenthetical statement. Its purpose is to further describe Lot’s attitude toward the evil people in Sodom. As in the previous verses, Good News Translation has converted this verse into a complete sentence.
That righteous man refers of course to Lot. For righteous, see 2 Peter 2.7 above.
The verse mentions three events with Lot as the doer or agent:
1. He lived among them, with them referring to the wicked people. This seems to be a general statement of setting.
2. He saw and heard what at the end of the verse is described as their lawless deeds. This describes Lot’s daily experience. Lawless deeds (Good News Translation “evil actions”) may also be expressed as “criminal behavior,” or “bad behavior.”
3. As a result of what he saw and heard, he was vexed in his righteous soul. This is actually an expansion of “greatly distressed” in verse 7. The verb for vexed can also mean “tormented,” “disturbed,” or “tortured,” either in a physical or in a mental sense. Here it focuses on the latter, since Lot did not suffer physically but mentally as a result of the wickedness of the people around him. Righteous soul has the same meaning as righteous man, and therefore in translation these can be combined, as Good News Translation has done under “That good man.” Righteous soul refers to the person himself, or to the person’s inner self, hence “his good heart,” “that good man’s heart” (New English Bible), “a good man suffering spiritual agonies” (Phillips).
This verse has the only occurrence of the phrase day after day in the New Testament. In some languages translators will find idiomatic expressions like the English, but in others it may be necessary to use an expression like “day and night.”
A model for this is as follows:
• While this good man lived among them, day after day (or, day and night) he was tormented in his heart because of their evil actions.
Quoted with permission from Arichea, Daniel C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Second Letter from Peter. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .