2 Peter 2:9

2 Peter 2:9. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unrighteous under punishment unto the day of judgment. The knowledge which is here in view is the Divine type of knowledge, which means both the perception of the way and the possession of the ability. ‘Temptation' is used here in the sense which it has in 1 Peter 1:6 (on which see Note), as including not only temptation in the limited sense, but all species of trial. The ‘ to be punished' which the A. V. gives (in this following the Vulgate) is an incorrect reading. The participle is present, and the idea is that the unrighteous are sustaining now a certain measure of punishment, in the state in which they are held in reserve for the final judgment of the great day. This sentence gives, in a somewhat free form, the conclusion which is expected for the series of conditional statements which began with 2 Peter 2:4. It is as if the writer had said, ‘If it has always happened, as I have stated it to have happened in these several historical instances with which all are familiar, is it not plain that the Lord will act on the same principle with these false teachers?' But while the previous context would lead us to look simply for a statement of the penal side of God's righteousness, Peter introduces here the other side as well. His notice of God's righteous care for the godly, however, is only for the moment. In the next verse he takes up only the punitive principle, and proceeds to make a pointed application of that to a particular class.

2 Peter 2:10. but chiefly those who go after the flesh in the lust of pollution, and despise lordship. Dares, self-willed, they tremble not in speaking evil of dignities. The parties aimed at appear to be the false teachers. Formerly they were described as only about to arise. They are spoken of now as already existing. The change from the future to the present may be due simply to the definite realization of the future in the writer's prophetic vision. But it is to be accounted for rather by the fact that the first movements of the evil, which was afterwards to prove so great, were already discerned within the Church. Peter, therefore, brings the general principle which he has illustrated to bear above all upon a class now under his own eye. These were the men, he means, for whom there could least be exemption from the sweep of God's punitive judgments. He proceeds to complete his account of what these men are, adding stronger colours to the picture of their scorn of law, their hostility to Christ, their covetousness, their sensuality. The description of their immorality is made more general than in Jude (Jude 1:7) by the omission of the epithet ‘strange' which qualifies the ‘flesh' in the latter. The phrase ‘go after' occurs in the literal sense in Mark 1:20, and in the metaphorical in Jude 1:7; Jeremiah 2:5. The lust of pollution (the latter word occurs only here) means the lust which pollutes. The term which the A. V. renders ‘presumptuous,' and which occurs again only in Titus 1:7, means rather ‘daring,' or ‘darers.' Instead of ‘presumptuous are they, self-willed' (which latter adjective occurs only here), therefore, we should translate either ‘self-willed darers,' or (with R. V.) ‘daring, self-willed.' The difficulty is in determining the sin alluded to in the two phrases ‘despise lordship' and ‘speaking evil of dignities,' which reappear in almost the same terms in Jude 1:8. Many interpreters, specially those of older date, have understood the offence to be that of contemptuous disregard of human authority, whether of that generally in all its forms, or of ecclesiastical rule, or of civil and political rule (Calvin, Erasmus, etc.), in particular. Recent commentators, again, have for the most part taken other than human authorities to be intended. Some, e.g., think that good angels are referred to in both the ‘lordship' and the ‘dignities;' others, that evil angels are denoted by both; others, that God or Christ is meant by the former, and either good angels (Ritschl) or evil angels (Wiesinger) by the latter. In the only other N. T. occurrence of this term ‘lordship' or ‘dominion' (Ephesians 1:21; Colossians 1:16), it is used of angels. In Jude 1:8 (the only other instance of the word in such an application) the term ‘dignities' is put, along with the whole statement, in immediate connection with what is said of Michael. The present passage, too, leads at once to direct mention of angels. These facts give probability to the view that by both terms angelic powers, in the character of God's agents in the authoritative administration of earthly things, are intended. All that is meant, however, may be a general mention of authority as such, and of the contempt of that, in all its forms, human, angelic, and Divine, as a characteristic mark of the class dealt with. In Romans 13:1-2, we find the word ‘power' in an equally indefinite, though perhaps less extensive, sense.