NEW TESTAMENT

2 Peter 2:4

The Holy Bible · English
All chapters

Read all chapter notes ↗

Bilingual reading
Text

Open an explanation beneath verses with notes. Your notes and highlights stay on this device.

4

For if God didn’t spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness to be reserved for judgment;

ExplanationCommentary
EXPLANATION

Verse 4. If God spared not the Angels, and so forth [2] Saint Peter here brings these examples of God’s justice. 1. Towards the rebellious angels that fell from heaven; 2. that of the general flood, or deluge; 3. when he destroyed Sodom and those other cities. First, angels that sinned, God by his justice delivered them, drawn down with infernal ropes into hell to be tormented, and to be reserved even for greater torments after the day of judgment. This seems to be the liberal sense of this fourth verse, which is obscure, and has divers reading in the Greek. In the examples of the deluge and of Sodom, Saint Peter shews not only the severity of God’s judgments upon the wicked, but also his merciful providence towards the small number of the just, as towards Noe, a preacher of justice, the eighth and chief of those who were preserved in the ark, when he spared not the world that was of old, (lit. the original world) or wicked of those ancient times. When he delivered that just man, Lot, at the time he reduced Sodom and those other cities to ashes: for Lot was just both in sight and hearing, without being corrupted by what he saw and heard; chaste as to his eyes and ears, or as to all that could be seen or heard of him, when the wicked among whom he lived vexed and grieved his just soul by their impious deeds. God, therefore, who knows and approves the ways of the godly, preserves them by his providence amidst temptations. Witham.

EXPLANATION

Tartarus is another name for Hell

Read all chapter notes
Read the whole chapter