Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Reason why persecutions must be expected, and these becoming worse and worse as the end approaches. The breach between light and darkness, so far from being healed, shall be widened [ALFORD]. evil men--in contrast to the "godly" (Ti2 3:12). seducers--literally, "conjurers." Magical arts prevailed at Ephesus (Act 19:19), and had been renounced by many Ephesians on embracing Christianity: but now when Paul was writing to Ephesus, symptoms of a return to conjuring tricks appeared: an undesigned coincidence [BURTON]. Probably sorcery will characterize the final apostasy (Rev 13:15; Rev 18:23; Rev 22:15). wax worse--literally, "advance in the direction of worse" (see on Ti2 3:9). Not contradictory to that verse: there the diffusion of the evil was spoken of; here its intensity [ALFORD]. deceiving, and being deceived--He who has once begun to deceive others, is the less easily able to recover himself from error, and the more easily embraces in turn the errors of others [BENGEL].