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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
2Pe_3:8 refers to the reason given in ἀφʼ ἧς , 2Pe_3:4, on which the scoffers based their assertion; it points out that the delay, also, of the Parousia is no proof that it will not take place.
ἓν δὲ τοῦτο ] “this one thing,” as a specially important point.
μὴ λανθανέτω ὑμᾶς ] “let it not be hid from you;” said with reference to 2Pe_3:5.
ὅτι μία ἡμέρα κ . τ . λ .] a thought that echoes Psa_90:4. The words lay stress on the difference between the divine and the human reckoning of time. It does not designate God as being absolutely without limitations of time (cui nihil est praeteritum, nihil futurum, sed omnia praesentia; Aretius), for it is not the nature of God that is here in question, but God’s reckoning of time which He created along with the world, and the words only bring out that it is different from that of man.[95] For this purpose the words of the Psalms were not sufficient: ΧΊΛΙΑ ἜΤΗ ἘΝ ὈΦΘΑΛΜΟῖς ΣΟΥ Ὡς Ἡ ἩΜΈΡΑ Ἡ ἘΧΘΈς ; and therefore on the basis of them the author constructs a verse consisting of two members.
ΠΑΡᾺ ΚΥΡΊΟΥ ] “with God,” i.e. in God’s way of looking at things. Since, then, time has a different value in God’s eyes from that which it has in the eyes of men, the tarrying hitherto of the judgment, although it had been predicted as at hand, is no proof that the judgment will not actually come.[96]
[95] Hofmann is consequently equally incorrect when he says that the passage in the Psalm asserts that “for God time is no time,” but here that “for Him it is neither short nor long.”
[96] The following thoughts are not expressed here, although they may he inferred from what is said: “In one single day of judgment God can punish the sin of centuries, and can adjust that great inequality which, by so long a duration, has been introduced into eternity” (Dietlein); and “in one day a mighty step onwards may be taken, such as in a thousand years could hardly have been expected; and then again, if retarded by the will of God, the march of development will, for a thousand years hardly move faster than otherwise it would have done in a single day” (Thiersch, p. 107).