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As also in all his epistles; to make the sense complete, we must supply here from the former verse, he hath written.
Speaking in them of these things; viz. concerning the second coming of Christ, and end of the world, the patience that should be exercised in waiting for it; about avoiding scoffers that deny these truths, and the other instructions contained in these two Epistles, but especially in the two latter chapters of this Second Epistle.
In which are some things hard to be understood; in which Epistles, or rather, in which things contained in Paul’s Epistles, for the Greek relative is of a different gender, and cannot agree with Epistles: q.d. Some of the doctrines delivered by Paul in his Epistles are hard to be understood. And so this doth not prove Paul’s Epistles, much less the whole Scripture, to be obscure and dark: the style and expression may be as clear as the nature of the things will bear, and yet the things themselves so expressed may be hard to be understood, either by reason of their own obscurity, as prophecies, the excellency and sublimeness of them, as some mysterious doctrines, or the weakness of men’s minds, and their incapacity of apprehending spiritual things, 1Co_2:14, compared with 1Co_13:9,10.
Which they that are unlearned; they that are ignorant of the Scripture, unskilful in the word of righteouness, Heb_5:13; or indocible, that will not be instructed.
And unstable; such as are ill grounded, and therefore unstedfast, and easily deceived, 2Pe_2:14: see Eph_4:14.
Wrest; pervert the Scripture, and offer violence to it, and, as it were, rack and torture it to make it confess what it never meant.
To their own destruction; eternal destruction, viz. while they use the Scriptures to countenance their errors; or stumble at some things in them, which are obscure, thereby taking occasion to deny the truth of God; and so make the Scripture the instrument of their perdition, which God appointed to be the means of salvation.