Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - 2 Peter 3:2 - 3:2
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
2Pe_3:2. Cf. Jud_1:17; in Jude mention is not made of the apostles, but only of the prophets.
μνησθῆναι ] Infin. of purpose: “in order that ye may remember,” equivalent to εἰς τὸ μνησθῆναι (Vorstius).
τῶν προειρημένων ῥημάτων ὑπὸ τῶν ἁγίων προφητῶν ] This applies evidently to the Old Testament prophets; and with especial reference to the prophecies which relate to the παρουσία of Christ (cf. 2Pe_3:4 and chap. 2Pe_1:19).[84] The Vulg. wrongly translates: ut memores sitis eorum quae praedixi verborum a sanctis prophetis (or sanctorum prophetarum).
καὶ τῆς τῶν ἀποστόλων ὑμῶν ἐντολῆς τοῦ κυρίου καὶ σωτῆρος ] On the commonly accepted reading ἡμῶν , a double interpretation has been given; some, making ἡμῶν depend on ἐντολῆς , for the most part regard τῶν ἀποστόλων as in apposition to ἡμῶν , thus: “of our, the apostles’, command” (Luther: “the commandment of us, who are the apostles of the Lord;” thus, too, Calvin, Hornejus, Wolf, Pott, Dietlein, etc.); whilst Bengel more correctly takes ἡμῶν as in apposition to ἀποστόλων , as in Act_10:41 : μάρτυσι … ἡμῖν ; for otherwise ἡμῶν must have stood before ἀποστόλων ; cf. also 1Co_1:18. Others, again, hold that ἡμῶν is dependent on ἀποστόλων ; thus de Wette: “the commandment of our apostles of the Lord, i.e. of the apostles who have preached to us, and are sent from the Lord.” But against this interpretation is the circumstance, that whilst he elsewhere in the epistle designates himself as an apostle, the author of the epistle would thus make a distinction between himself and the apostles.[85] On the true reading: ὑμῶν , the gen. τοῦ κυρίου does not, as was for the most part formerly assumed, depend on ἀποστόλων , but on ἐντολῆς (Brückner, Wiesinger, Schott, Steinfass); either in the sense: “the commandment … of the Lord of the apostles, i.e. the commandment of the Lord, which the apostles have proclaimed;” or: “ τοῦ κυρίου is added by way of supplement to ἐντολ .,” and the expression is to be left as it stands originally: “your command of the apostles, of the Lord, i.e. which the Lord has given” (Brückner; thus also Wiesinger, Schott); the latter is to be preferred. No doubt the parallel passage in Jude runs: ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν ; but the whole epistle, and especially this passage of it, shows that the author of our epistle, even if he had Jude’s composition before him, in no way bound himself slavishly to individual expressions in it. According to Wiesinger, Schott, Steinfass, by the ἀπ . ὑμ . Paul and his fellow-labourers are meant; this, too, is more probable than that the apostle included himself among them.
By ἐντολή is here, as little as in chap. 2Pe_2:21, to be understood the gospel or the Christian religion (or, as Dietlein thinks: “the announcement, i.e. the historical proclamation, of those predictions of the prophets, partly fulfilled, partly yet unfulfilled, which was entrusted to the apostles”); but ἐντολή means here, as it always does, the commandment; according to de Wette: “the commandment to guard against the false teachers,” after 1Ti_4:1 ff. But it is more appropriate, and more in harmony with the connection of thought, to understand by it the command to lead a Christian life, in expectation of the second coming of Christ (Wiesinger, Schott, Brückner); cf. chap. 2Pe_2:22, 2Pe_1:5 ff., 2Pe_3:12.
[84] Of course τὰ προειρημένα ῥήματα does not mean “what has been said before,” but “the words aforetime spoken,” and Hofmann did not require to insist upon it; the more so that the contrary is not asserted in the commentaries against which his argument is directed.
[85] De Wette thinks, indeed, that here the non-apostolic writer has involuntarily betrayed himself; but, as Stier justly observes, it can indeed hardly be supposed that the writer should have “so grossly failed to keep up the part” which he had distinctly assumed.