What does agorazo ("bought") mean in 2 Peter 2:1?
Agorazō (ἀγοράζω) means to buy, to purchase in the marketplace, a completed transaction at a price. In 2 Peter 2:1 false teachers deny "the Lord that bought [agorasanta] them," and perish, purchased men who are still lost.
What the text states
Agorazō is the ordinary word for buying, and its object here is persons: the Lord bought them. Christ acquires men one way in the New Testament, by His blood (Acts 20:28, Rev 5:9), so the purchase in 2 Peter 2:1 is redemptive. Yet these bought men “bring upon themselves swift destruction.” Bought is the price paid; being in Christ is by faith; these had the first and refused the second.
That is the whole point: a real purchase, at a price, for men who nonetheless perish, which limited atonement cannot allow and universal provision explains exactly.
Go deeper
Checked 2026-09-29 by Darren. 45 Scripture citations verified against the KJV rows. Every Strong's number in the wave-3 notes resolved against our own strongs_greek / strongs_hebrew and the lemma matched the form in the file. Wave 3. 45 quoted fragments table-passed against the verses table, all pass. 21 Greek and 3 Hebrew Strong's entries cross-checked against strongs_greek (5,523 rows) and strongs_hebrew (8,674). Three notes, none a form mismatch: (1) G2434 hilasmos is glossed in our table as 'atonement... an expiator', usage 'propitiation', so Strong's own wording is softer than the answer's 'not merely expiation'; Thayer and BDAG carry the propitiation sense and the KJV renders it so. (2) G728 is spelled arrhabon in our table (double rho) against the file's arrabon; the same word, a transliteration convention. (3) our table derives skenoo (G4637) from skenos (G4636), while the answer says it is built on skene (G4633); the three are cognate and skene is the LXX's tabernacle word. One reference in the wave-3 verification notes did not exist: Rev 22:24 (Revelation 22 ends at verse 21). Ruled by Darren 2026-09-29 a typo for Rev 22:17 and corrected in the source file. The hilasmos gloss discrepancy was ruled the same day: the answer stands and is not softened.
This answer is the short form. The argument is made at length in Bought, Then Perished.