2 Peter 3:12

2 Peter 3:12. looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God. This is the only instance of the ‘day' being designated ‘the day of God.' The ‘looking for' is expressed by the term which is rendered ‘wait for' in Luke 1:21; Luke 8:40; Acts 10:24, ‘expect' in Acts 3:5, ‘be in expectation' in Luke 3:15, etc. Following the Vulgate and the older English Versions, the A. V. gives ‘hasting unto.' This is certainly wrong. The question is, which of two interpretations is to be substituted, whether the simple ‘hastening' (or ‘hasting,' as the A. V. puts it in the margin), or ‘earnestly desiring' (as the R. V. gives it in the text). The Classics may be said to present instances of both meanings. But it is rather the idea of ‘ busying oneself earnestly about a thing' than that of merely ‘expecting' it that the Classical usage illustrates, and that sense suits objects which are present rather than things which are yet prospective. The other meaning, ‘hastening, or ‘urging on,' is well sustained, and has the special advantage of agreeing in a remarkable way with the appeal made by Peter (which otherwise is of an entirely exceptional kind) in his discourse in Solomon's Porch ‘Repent ye, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus; whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things,' etc. (Acts 3:19-21). The idea, therefore, is that of accelerating the advent of that decisive day through our holy lives and our labours for the advancement of the Gospel, causing that day to ‘come the more quickly, as Archbishop Trench explains it (On the A. V., p. 131), ‘by helping to fulfil those conditions without which it cannot come that day being no day inexorably fixed, but one the arrival of which it is free to the Church to help and hasten on by faith and by prayer, and through a more rapid accomplishing of the number of the elect.' That this idea, though seldom expressed in the N. T., was not unfamiliar to Jews, is proved by the occurrence of such rabbinical sayings as this: ‘If thou keepest this precept, thou hastenest the day of Messiah.' But it is enshrined, indeed, in the second petition of the Lord's Prayer Thy kingdom come.

by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements burning with intense heat are melted. The ‘wherein' of the A. V. is entirely wrong. The ‘which' may refer either to the ‘Coming' or to the ‘day;' and the meaning is that this event of the ‘Coming,' or this ‘day of God,' will occasion the change or catastrophe which is reaffirmed here. The one thing will inevitably cause the other. The idea is something like that in Revelation 20:11. The tense changes from the future, ‘shall be dissolved,' into the present, ‘are melted;' the effect of which is to give yet greater force to the assertion of the certainty of this destiny. This last verb is one which denotes melting in the most literal sense the melting, e.g., of snow, of metals, of salt in water, etc. Some stumble at the application of this to the elements. Others point to the fact that the record of the rocks bears witness to a process of liquefaction by fire to which the material of the existing earth has been subjected, and ask why the present system may not undergo a like process of fiery renovation at the great day. The use to be made of the passage, however, must be a very guarded one, so far as theorizings about the nature of the end are concerned. Peter is speaking in terms of the lofty prophetic imagery of the O. T. Compare such passages as Micah 1:4; Malachi 4:1, and above all, Isaiah 34:4. Classical literature has anticipations of a similar kind. Cicero, e.g., says that ‘it will happen, nevertheless, one day that all this world shall be burnt up with fire' (Acad. Quest. iii. 37).