2 Peter 3:4-6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Where is the promise of his coming To raise the dead, judge mankind, and destroy the earth? We see no sign of any such thing. The promise of Christ's coming we have Matthew 15:27, The Son of man shall come in his glory, &c.; John 14:3, I will come and receive you to myself, &c., and in many other passages of the gospel; a promise which was renewed by the angels at our Lord's ascension, and is spoken of in many passages of the epistles, especially in those of St. Paul. By representing Christ's promised coming as a delusion, the scoffers set themselves and others free from all fear of a future judgment, and bereft the righteous of their hope of reward. For since the fathers fell asleep Since our ancestors died; all things Heaven, earth, air, water; continue as they were from the beginning of the creation Without any such material change as might make us believe they will ever have an end. So say these scoffers. For this they willingly are ignorant of As if he had said, It is from their ignorance, their gross, affected ignorance, that they argue after this manner. He says willingly ignorant, to signify that they had sufficient means of knowing better, but that they did not care to know or consider any thing respecting it. That by the word of God His almighty word, which bounds the duration of all things, so that it cannot be either longer or shorter; the heavens As by the heavens here the apostle means the atmosphere which surrounds this earth, the plural is put for the singular by a change of the number very common in the Scriptures; were of old Anciently before the flood; and the earth standing Or subsisting, (as συνεστωσα more properly signifies,) out of the water Which had before covered it, namely, emerging from it by the divine command, (the earth being formed out of the chaos, which had been previously brought into existence for that purpose,) and the liquid element retiring to the channels prepared for it; and in the water By which God appointed that it should be surrounded, nourished, and supported, water being the life of the vegetable creation; whereby Δι ' ων, by which things, thus constituted; the world that then was The whole antediluvian race, with all the brute animals, except such as were with Noah in the ark; being overflowed with water, perished Perhaps δι ' ων, by which things, refers to the heavens mentioned above, and may relate to the windows of heaven being opened, as the expression is Genesis 7:11, and pouring forth upon the earth a destructive deluge of water. The apostle means that these scoffers did not consider God's power manifested in making the world, which must enable him also to destroy it if he pleased, and that they had little reason for saying that all things continued as they were from the creation.