2 Peter 2:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For if Or since, as ει γαρ may be here rendered; God spared not the angels that sinned “The angels seem to have been placed originally in a state of trial. Those who stood are called in Scripture, the holy angels. The sin of the angels is spoken of likewise, John 8:44, and Jude, 2 Peter 2:6, as a thing well known. Perhaps it was handed down by tradition from Adam and Eve, for the memory of it seems to have been preserved among the heathens in the fable of the Titans warring against the gods. What the sin of the angels was is not well known. Judges 1:6, says, They kept not their first estate, or their own principality, as την εαυτων αρχην may be properly rendered, but left their proper habitation. Hence their sin, by many, is thought to have been pride, and a discontent with their station. See 1 Timothy 3:6. But whatever it was, considering their high intellectual powers, they might easily have avoided it; and therefore God did not spare them, as he spared Adam and Eve, who, on account of the greatness of the temptation spread for them by the evil angels, and their own inexperience, were fit objects of mercy.” But cast them down to hell The bottomless pit, a place of unknown misery. The original expression, αλλα σειραις ζοφου Ταρταρωσας, is rendered by Macknight, But with chains of darkness confining them in Tartarus. The word Tartarus, he observes, is not found in the LXX., nor anywhere in the New Testament but here. Its meaning, therefore, must be sought for among the Greeks. Homer represents Tartarus, Iliad, 8. ver. 13, as “a deep place under the earth, where there are iron gates and a brazen entrance.” It is derived from a word expressive of terror, and signifies the doleful prison in which wicked spirits are reserved till they shall be brought out to public condemnation and execution. In like manner, Hesiod speaks of Tartarus as a place far under ground, where the Titans are bound with chains in thick darkness. But on other occasions the Greek writers speak of Tartarus as in the air, and at the extremity of the earth. Hence the epithet Ταρταρον ηεροεντα, airy Tartarus. The Jews, as appears from Job 2:2, thought that at least some of the fallen angels were permitted to wander up and down the earth, and to tempt men. This was the doctrine of the evangelists likewise, who speak of the devil tempting our Lord; and of Peter, who represents him as a roaring lion walking about, &c., 1 Peter 5:8; as also of St. Paul, who insinuates that evil spirits have their habitation in the air, Ephesians 2:2; Ephesians 6:11-12. Wherefore seeing the Greeks named the place where they supposed the Titans, the enemies of the gods, were confined, Tartarus, it was natural for Peter, when writing in the Greek language, concerning confining the evil angels in the place where they were shut up, to call it Tartarus, although his idea of Tartarus was different from that of the Greeks. Because it is said, Revelation 20:3, that Satan was cast, εις αβυσσον, into the abyss, and Luke 8:31, that the devil besought Jesus that he would not command them to go out, εις αβυσσον, into the abyss, Estius infers that Tartarus and Hell are the same; and that the greatest part of the angels who sinned are confined there, though some of them are allowed to roam about on the earth, tempting men. See Macknight and Doddridge. Reserved unto judgment The full execution and open manifestation thereof. From this it follows that the angels who sinned are not at present suffering the punishment due to them for their crimes; but, like malefactors, they are kept in durance till the time come when they are to be punished with the wicked of mankind, whom they have seduced. Whitby hath shown that this was the opinion of all the Christian writers for five centuries. And it is agreeable to our Lord's doctrine, who says, the fire into which wicked men are to be cast, is fire prepared for the devil and his angels.