2 Timothy 3:13

Ver. 13. But evil men and deceivers shall grow worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. We have here, by way of contrast to the life and experience of such as live piously in Christ, a return to the wretched characters formerly discoursed of the modern representatives of the Egyptian magicians. For the language employed is strictly applicable only to such: evil men and γόητες we have no precise synonym for it; deceivers is too general, though we must take it for want of a better; but the word is expressive of a specific class of deceivers the class of magicians, sorcerers, thaumaturgists, or wonder-workers, as they were variously called, who by dexterous sleight of hand, mysterious incantations, and consummate hypocrisy, wrought upon the hopes and fears of the credulous. In naming these, the apostle is plainly not to be understood as introducing a new class, for they bear the very lineaments of those already described and denounced; but their course of life and its fruits are now placed over against those of the true followers of Christ. How different! Living in an element of deceit, they come to be themselves deceived; their sin becomes their snare and their punishment: so that, in so far as they are capable of progress, the progress is from bad to worse; and if their manner of life is such as to save them from persecution at the hand of others, it brings recompenses of evil far more to be dreaded, and these prepared by their own hands. The assertion of Huther, that the term γόητες in this passage is only in a kind of secondary or figurative sense applied to the parties in question, that it merely represents them as exercising a sort of magical power over their weak, especially female, followers, is without foundation. The unqualified use of such a term cannot justly be understood otherwise than as identifying them with the wily and unscrupulous professors of the magical art.