2 Peter 3:10

2 Peter 3:10. But the day of the Lord; the day which in 2 Peter 3:12 is called ‘the day of God,' and elsewhere ‘the day of Christ' (2 Thessalonians 2:2), ‘the day of the Lord Jesus' (2 Corinthians 1:14). The expression carries us back to the Old Testament prophecies of Jehovah's day, or the day of the Lord (Joel 1:15; Isaiah 2:12; Ezekiel 13:5), and the day of His Coming (Malachi 3:2). There it designates Messiah's Coming, or Jehovah's own Coming in connection with the realization of Messianic hope, and that as an event of judicial as well as gracious consequence. In such passages as the present it is transferred to the day of the Second Advent, and to that specially as a day of judicial sifting and decision. This clause affirms the certainty of the approach of that time, notwithstanding the facts just noticed, and the order of the words gives great emphasis to the statement. Though some deem it so late of appearing (the writer means), that it may never appear, and though it is true that God in His long-suffering delays the event, ‘yet come will (or, ‘on you shall be ‘) the day of the Lord.' The suddenness with which it will enter is next asserted. as a thief: the best authorities omit the words ‘in the night' which are added in the A. V. Peter had been taught the figure by Christ Himself (Matthew 24:43; Luke 12:39). It appears also in Paul (1 Thessalonians 5:2) and in the Apocalypse (chaps, Revelation 3:3; Revelation 16:15). It does not properly convey the idea of dread, but simply that of the swift and unexpected.

in which the heavens with a rushing noise shall pass away. The phrase ‘with a great noise,' which is given by both the A. V. and the R. V., is a prosaic rendering, which entirely fails to do justice to the singular vividness and force of the original. Peter uses an adverb which is not found elsewhere in the New Testament, and which, indeed, is of rare occurrence even in the Classics. It means ‘with a rushing sound' (or, ‘motion'). The idea expressed by its cognates is that of the whizzing or hurtling of arrows, the whistling of the descending scourge, the whirring wing and rushing movement of the bird in flight. It is a term to stimulate the imagination, conveying by a single stroke a conception which it takes many words to reproduce in English, of the dread facility with which the change shall be effected, its unerring suddenness and rapidity, the crash of its instantaneous completion. The renderings of some of the older English Versions deserve notice. Wycliffe, e.g., gives ‘with great birr;' Tyndale, ‘with terrible noise;' Cranmer, ‘in manner of a tempest;' the Rhemish, ‘with great violence.' As to the ‘pass away' (the same verb had been used by Christ in His prophecy of the end, Matthew 24:35), compare such passages as Revelation 21:11; Isaiah 34:4; Psalms 102:27.

the elements, moreover, shall be dissolved, consumed by intense heat. The connecting word here is not the usual ‘and,' but a conjunction which implies contrast or distinction as well as connection. It should therefore be rendered ‘but,' or ‘moreover.' The ‘melt' of the A. V. should rather be, as in 2 Peter 3:11 (where the same verb is employed), ‘be dissolved' (or ‘loosed'). The phrase ‘with fervent heat,' which is given by the A. V. and retained by the R. V., represents a participle which means ‘burning fiercely,' or ‘consumed with fierce heat.' The question of difficulty here, however, is what we are to under stand by these ‘elements.' Some (e.g. Bengel, Alford, Plumptre, etc.) suppose that the heavenly bodies are meant, these being, as it were, the elements making up the heavens. This view is held to be supported by such considerations as these: the fact that the sun, moon, and stars are introduced into other biblical descriptions of the day of the Lord (Isaiah 13:9-10; Isaiah 24:23; Isaiah 34:4, etc.), and especially in Christ's own announcement of it (Matthew 24:29); the relation in which this clause stands to the preceding statement about the heavens themselves; the employment of the term by early Christian writers (e.g. Justin Martyr, Apol. ii. 5, Trypho, xxiii.) in this sense; and the apparent distinction drawn here between these elements and both the heavens and the earth. Others (Bede, etc.) take the four elements of the physical universe, earth, air, water, fire, to be in view. In this case there is the awkward ness of representing the writer as speaking of the dissolution of fire by fire; hence it is proposed to limit the expression to three of these elements, or even to air and water alone (Estius). All these views, however, as well as other modifications of them (such e.g. as the idea that the stars in particular are meant), attribute to Peter a more sharply-defined meaning than was probably intended. The great objection to the first view is that the term does not appear to denote the heavenly bodies in any other passage' of Scripture. In Classical Greek it seems to mean primarily the several parts of a series, the components which make up something; whence it came to be used of the simple series of sounds which form the elements of language, the first principles or elementary data of science, such as the points, lines, etc. of geometry, and, in Physics, the component parts of matter, which were reduced to four in the philosophical schools. In the New Testament it occurs only seven times, viz. in the present verse and again in 2 Peter 3:12, in Galatians 4:3; Galatians 4:9, in Colossians 2:8; Colossians 2:20, and Hebrews 5:12. In the Petrine passages it clearly has a physical sense; in the others an ethical. Here it is applied, with no reference to scientific or philosophical ideas, but in a broad and popular sense, to the parts of which the heavens in particular, or the system of things generally, are made up. It may denote, therefore, much the same as is covered by the phrase ‘the powers of the heavens' in Matthew 24:29 (so Huther), the idea being that these heavens shall pass away by having their constituent parts dissolved. Or it may refer in the wider sense to the whole framework of the world, as that world was conceived to consist of heavens and earth (so Wordsworth, etc.).

and the earth; so it should be rendered, and not ‘the earth also.'

and the works that are therein shall be burnt up. The ‘works' are not to be limited either to the results of man's moral activity (as in 1 Corinthians 3:13; 1 Corinthians 3:15), or to his achievements in general. The phrase is better understood, as is done by most interpreters, in the wider sense given it by Bengel ‘works of nature and of art.' As Peter's language, however, seems at so many points here to be steeped in the terms of the ancient prophecies, it is still more likely that this is simply his equivalent for the Old Testament phrase ‘the earth and the fulness thereof.' In that case it would point to God's works rather than to man's ‘to the creations of God which belong to the earth, as they are related in the history of creation, cf. Revelation 10:6 ' (Huther). Instead of ‘burnt up,' some of the very best documentary authorities, including the two most ancient manuscripts, give another reading, which means ‘shall be found.' It is supposed, however, that this reading is one of those in which the earliest documents themselves have gone astray, and that, as the reading followed by the Received Text is supported by far inferior authorities, this is one of a few passages in which the original text has not been preserved in any of our existing authorities. The reading of the oldest manuscripts is supposed by the latest critical editors to have arisen from a corruption of another, which would mean ‘shall flow (or, melt) away' (see Westcott and Hort, vol. 2 p. 103). Those who retain the reading which the ordinary laws of evidence would lead us to adopt, get a satisfactory sense out of it by interpreting it ‘shall be discovered,' that is, found out judicially, or made to appear as they are. This would fit in very well with the idea of the next verse, which is that of the manner of life which the thought of the judicial end should recommend. Some propose to hold by the ordinary sense of the verb, and to turn the sentence into an interrogation ‘Shall the earth and the works that are therein be found (i.e shall they continue) then?' There is no uncertainty as to the sense which is meant to be conveyed. The uncertainty attaches only to the particular expression which was given to that sense. But this forms, in view of the singular results which are shown by the documents, one of the most perplexing problems in the criticism and history of the text. One of the primary manuscripts has another reading, which means ‘shall disappear.' A later Syriac Version inserts the negative, and gives ‘shall not be found.' The wide variety of reading is a witness to the early uncertainty of the text here, and to the difficulty felt with the term which was transmitted by the oldest documents. It is well to know, on the testimony of those who have devoted their lives to such questions as these, that the passages affected by anything amounting to substantial variation ‘can hardly form more than one-thousandth part of the entire text,' and that ‘the books of the New Testament as preserved in extant documents assuredly speak to us in every important respect in language identical with that in which they spoke to those for whom they were originally written' (Westcott and Hort's New Testament in Greek, ii. pp. 2, 284).