2 Peter 3:5 - Wesley's Explanatory Notes

For this they are willingly ignorant of — They do not care to know or consider. That by the almighty word of God — Which bounds the duration of all things, so that it cannot be either longer or shorter. Of old — Before the flood. The aerial heavens were, and the earth — Not as it is now, but standing out of the water and in the water — Perhaps the interior globe of earth was fixed in the midst of the great deep, the abyss of water; the shell or exterior globe standing out of the water, covering the great deep. This, or some other great and manifest difference between the original and present constitution of the terraqueous globe, seems then to have been so generally known, that St. Peter charges their ignorance of it totally upon their wilfulness.