2 Timothy 4:9 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Do thy diligence to come shortly. — Such a request as this would — had we no other arguments — tell us that no forger ever wrote this Epistle. Who would ever have dreamed of putting into the letter such a request as this, after those solemn expressions of the last few verses, in which the Apostle spoke of himself as even then tasting the bitterness of death? He had been writing as though the martyr’s death was so imminent that the preparations were already being made for it. This request to Timothy to come to him, after he had written such thoughts down, is at first sight strange, and one certainly which no forger would have appended to the writing. But though the forger would never have thought of such a summons, St. Paul might. He still lived, and the thought of life and the hope of life even in that brave Christ-loving heart still burned; after all, the martyrdom which seemed so close at hand might be delayed. Days, months, might drag on their slow, weary length, and still find the old man languishing and solitary in his chains in that dreary prison. He longed to see some of his faithful companions once more, and for the last time to bid them with his own mouth to be faithful and brave. So, as it were, hoping against hope, he dictates on the last pages of the letter, “Do thy diligence,” or better, “earnestly endeavour to come shortly to me.” His loving wish to see Timothy again appears from the words of 2 Timothy 1:4 : “greatly desiring to see thee;” and again from 2 Timothy 4:21. “Do thy diligence to come before winter.” And some have seen in the expression, “being mindful of thy tears,” in 2 Timothy 1:4 (to which we have given, however, a different interpretation), a reciprocal anxiety on the part of Timothy to see and speak again with his old master. But St. Paul, though he begged him to hasten his journey as much as possible, and still, though all seemed so dark around him, hoped to see him again, framed the charge of the last letter in such a way that Timothy, if when he reached Rome, should find that all was over, might know what were his master’s last wishes and directions. On the natural human longing for sympathy in the supreme hour, compare our blessed Lord’s words to Peter, James, and John (Matthew 26:38): “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with Me.”