2 Thessalonians 3:2

καὶ ἵνα ῥυσθῶμεν�, and that we may be delivered from the perverse and wicked men: the second object of the prayers solicited; διπλῆ μὲν ἡ αἴτησις εἶναι δοκεῖ, μία δὲ ὅμως ἐστίν· τῶν γὰρ πονηρῶν�, ἀκωλύτως καὶ ὁ τοῦ κηρύγματος συντρέχει λόγος (Chrysostom) Cf. Romans 15:31, ἵνα ῥυσθῶ�.τ.λ., both passages recalling Isaiah 25:4, ἀπὸ�. Τῶν points to a definite body, or class, of such men: these were, in chief, the Jewish enemies of the Gospel in Corinth, from the outset violent opponents of St Paul’s work (Acts 18:6; Acts 18:12-17), from whom the Apostles were in fact “delivered” by the sentence of the Proconsul Gallio. Of the same breed were the adversaries who in vain combated the progress of the Gospel in Macedonia (Acts 17:5; Acts 17:13; cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, and notes).

Ἄ-τοπος is hap. leg. in N.T. as applied to persons; of things, Luke 23:41; Acts 25:5; Acts 28:6 : it signifies place-less, out-of-the-way, out of court; and so eccentric, absurd, ineptus; then, in a moral sense, ill-bred or ill-conditioned, stupid, perverse, importunus (Vulg.)—the common meaning of ἄτοπος in later Greek (Lightfoot): cf. Demosthenes 439. 26, ἄτοποι καὶ δυσχερεῖς. For πονηρός, see note on 1 Thessalonians 5:22; πονηροὶ ἄνθρωποι appear in 2 Timothy 3:13 in company with γόητες; see also note on ὁ πονηρός in next verse.

For ῥύομαι, see 1 Thessalonians 1:10, and note; the word points to enemies who seemed to have the Apostles in their grasp: cf. also 2 Timothy 4:17; and the catalogue of perils in 2 Corinthians 11:23-33.

οὐ γὰρ πάντων ἡ πίστις, for not to all does the faith belong. Cf., for the form of the sentence, the proverb, Οὐ παντὸς�ʼ ὁ πλοῦς. This expression does not refer, like the similar denunciation of Acts 8:21 ff., to pretended Christian believers, but to those “who do not obey the Gospel” and have become in consequence its bitter, unscrupulous opponents (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10),—the ἄπιστοι of Corinth (2 Corinthians 4:4; 2 Corinthians 6:14 f.; 1 Timothy 5:8), and such as the ἀπειθοῦντες of Romans 15:31. Ἡ πίστις, in this context, signifies not the moral quality of faithfulness, fidelity (a very questionable sense for πίστις in the N.T.: cf. note on 2 Thessalonians 1:4), but “the (Christian, true) faith”; cf. ἡ� in 2 Thessalonians 2:10, and the πίστις� of 2 Thessalonians 2:13. The Apostles put their meaning in a pathetically softened way (cf. note on “not pleasing,” 1 Thessalonians 2:15): “Alas, all do not share our faith (cf. Acts 26:29); many are its enemies and bear us a fierce hatred on its account. Will you pray that we may be delivered from their power?” There is a like sad litotes in Romans 10:16 : οὐ πάντες ὑπήκουσαν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ. Their unbelief in Christ brought out the ἀτοπία and πονηρία of the Corinthian opposers, who “loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19): hence the explicative γάρ clause. Schmiedel gives a different explanation: “Only deliverance from them is to be prayed for, since their conversion is hopeless.” For the genitive of the possessor, with similar subject, cf. Acts 1:7; Hebrews 5:14.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12.

A full account of the exegesis of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 would embrace the history of the critical epochs and decisive conflicts of Christendom. This prophecy has constantly recurred to the mind of the Church and its meaning has been anxiously scanned in hours of trial. To such seasons, indeed, we should look for its interpretation. History is the expositor of prophecy. The seeds of the future lie in the past; and not the seeds alone, its buddings and forthputtings are there; for “that which is hath been already, and that which is to be hath already been.” “First the blade,” said Jesus, “then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.” The development of God’s kingdom, and of Satan’s, is in either case continuous until full ripeness. “Let both grow together until the harvest.”

It may be worth our while, therefore, to trace in its historical outline the development of the doctrine of Antichrist—as it appears in Scripture, and as it has been unfolded in the belief of the Church.

2. THE MESSIANIC TIMES AND JEWISH APOCALYPTIC

Antiochus Epiphanes[2], it is agreed, was the primary subject of the Visions of judgement on the great enemy of Israel contained in the Book of Daniel. In his overthrow, and in the Maccabean resurrection of the Jewish nationality, this Apocalypse received its proximate fulfilment. But when the period of the Maccabees was past and the nation fell again under a foreign yoke, while no further sign appeared of the Messiah, it was plain to believing readers that the revelation had some further import. In this faith the sufferings of the people of God under the Herodian and Roman oppression were endured, as “birthpangs of the Messiah”; it was felt that Israel’s hope was even at the doors.

[2] Antiochus IV., or Antiochus Epiphanes—i.e. the Illustrious or Manifest (scil. θεὸς ἐπιφανής), nicknamed Epimanes, the Madman—was the seventh king of the Græco-Syrian dynasty of the Seleucids, and reigned from 175 to 164 B.C. His father was Antiuochus III. (the Great), after whose defeat by the Romans in the year 188 he was given to them as a hostage, and brought up at Rome. He returned to take his father’s throne, full of wild ambition and of reckless impiety and prodigality. On the career of Antiochus IV., see Stanley’s History of the Jewsih Church, vol. III., Ewald’s History of Israel, vol. V. (Eng. Trans.); Smith’s, and Hastings’, Dict. of the Bible; Driver’s Daniel, Introd. § 2.

In this expectation the patriotism of Israel lived and glowed; it is vividly expressed in the extant Apocryphal literature of the pre-Christian times,—in the Sibylline Oracles; the Book of Enoch, ch. xc.; the Psalms of Solomon, especially 17, 18. Of less importance in this respect are the Assumption of Moses and the Book of Jubilees, contemporaneous with the Christian era. The 2nd (Latin 4th) Book of Esdras, and the kindred Apocalypse of Baruch, though dating probably from the close of the first century A.D., reflect the eschatology of Jewish nationalists during the struggle with Rome[3]. These witnesses confirm and illustrate the indications of the Gospels as to the keenness and intensity of the Messianic outlook at the time of the appearance of Jesus, and as to the political and materialistic nature of the popular ideal, which was animated by antipathy to Rome on the one side, and to sceptical or heretical movements within Judaism upon the other. Our Lord in assuming the title Son of Man appealed to, while He corrected, the anticipation of those who “looked for Israel’s redemption”—an expectation largely founded upon the Apocalypse of Daniel and coloured by its imagery. Before long, as He foretold, “the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet,” would again “stand in the Holy Place”(Matthew 24:15); thereafter “the sign of the Son of Man” would be “seen in heaven,” and at last the Son of Man Himself was destined to “come with the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 24:30; Matthew 26:64).

[3] See, on the whole subject, Schürer’s The Jewsih People in the Time of Christ (Eng. Tr.), Div. II. Vol. II. pp. 128 ff., The Messianic Hope.

The Messianic forecasts of our Lord’s time, being drawn from the above Danielic source, could not fail to bring along with them as their counterpart, and in their shadow, the image of Daniel’s Antichrist; it may be seen in the παράνομος-Βελίαρ of the Sibylline Oracles (cf. St Paul’s ὁ ἄνομος, and the Βελίαρ-Antichrist of 2 Corinthians 6:15). The direct evidence of this fact is only slight; the existence of the Jewish doctrine of Antichrist anterior to the Christian era depends for proof, as appears in M. Friedländer’s recent monograph on the subject (Der Antichrist in den vorchristlichen jüdischen Quellen), upon the data of the Midrash and Talmud, from which one has to argue back to antecedent times (see also Weber’s Jüdische Theologie, 4te Abtheilung). Bousset has however shown, by the researches summarized in his Essay on Antichrist,[4] that the roots of this conception run far back into esoteric pre-Christian Jewish teaching; and Gunkel, in his striking work, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit, has even attempted to find its origin in primitive Babylonian cosmogony. This last theory would carry us into very distant and speculative regions. In later Judaism—certainly before the eighth century—Antichrist became a familiar figure under the name Armillus (?=Romulus: the designation is aimed at Rome, which was also cryptically known as Edom). Under this name he figures in the Jewish fables of the Middle Ages, in a variety of forms partly analogous and partly hostile to the Christian doctrine. “Armillus” appears in the Targum of Jonathan upon Isaiah 11:4, the passage quoted by the Apostle in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 : “With the breath of his lips shall he (Messiah) slay Armillus, the wicked one.” The currency of an archaic Jewish doctrine, or legend, of Antichrist makes it easier to understand the rapid development which this conception received in the New Testament, and the force with which it appealed to the mind of the Apostolic Church.

[4] Der Antichrisrt in der Ueberlieferung des Judentums, des neuen Testaments, und der alten Kirche (Göttingen, 1895). Following Gunkel, Bousset writes (p. 93): “In the literature of the O. T., and in some passages of the New, we find abundant traces of a primeval Dragon myth, which in later times took the form of an eschatological anticipation. There subsisted in popular Jewish belief the expectation, which can be recognized in the Apocalypse, of an uprising at the end of the days of the old Sea-monster with whom God strove in the creation, who will assault heaven in his war with God … the legend of Antichrist appears to me to be no more than an anthropomorphic recasting of this myth … The Dragon is replaced by the Man, armed with miraculous powers, who deifies himself. For the Jews, this personality was necessarily identical with the Pseudo-Messias.” See also Gunkel, op. cit., pp. 221 f.: “It is well known that Judaism expected a great and general apostasy in the last times. After the age of Daniel it was understood that this consummation of wickedness would incorporate itself in a man, who would want only assail everything holy, and even the temple of God in Jerudalem … The ἄνομος proclaims himself God, in the temple of God; and this deification of a man is the crowning sin which Judaism imputes to the kings of the Gentiles … The ἄνομος-prophecy of 2 Thessalonians is no arbitrary invention of an individual; it gives expression to a belief which had behind it a long historical development, and was at that time universally diffused.”

The words of Christ fixed the attention of His disciples upon the prophecies of Daniel, and supplied the ἀφορμή from which proceeded the revival of Old Testament Apocalypse in the prophecies of St Paul and St John, where this movement took a direction and an ethical character very different from that of non-Christian Judaism. Beside His express citations of Daniel, there were other traits in our Lord’s pictures of the Last Things—the predictions of national conflict, of persecutions from without and defections within His Church (Matthew 24:3-13)—which reproduced the general characteristics of this prophet’s visions, and which lent emphasis to His specific and deliberate references thereto. The use made by Jesus Christ of this obscure and suspected Book of Scripture has raised it to high honour in the esteem of the Church.