For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; For if God spared not the angels - The angels were originally placed in a state of probation; some having fallen and some having stood proves this. How long that probation was to last to them, and what was the particular test of their fidelity, we know not; nor indeed do we know what was their sin; nor when nor how they fell. St. Jude says they kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation; which seems to indicate that they got discontented with their lot, and aspired to higher honors, or perhaps to celestial domination. The tradition of their fall is in all countries and in all religions, but the accounts given are various and contradictory; and no wonder, for we have no direct revelation on the subject. They kept not their first estate, and they sinned, is the sum of what we know on the subject; and here curiosity and conjecture are useless.
But cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness - Αλλα σειραις ζοφου ταρταρωσας παρεδωκεν εις κρισιν τετηρημενους· But with chains of darkness confining them in Tartarus, delivered them over to be kept to judgment; or, sinking them into Tartarus, delivered them over into custody for punishment, to chains of darkness. Chains of darkness is a highly poetic expression. Darkness binds them on all hands; and so dense and strong is this darkness that it cannot be broken through; they cannot deliver themselves, nor be delivered by others.
As the word Tartarus is found nowhere else in the New Testament, nor does it appear in the Septuagint, we must have recourse to the Greek writers for its meaning. Mr. Parkhurst, under the word ταρταροω, has made some good collections from those writers, which I here subjoin.
"The Scholiast on Aeschylus, Eumen., says: Pindar relates that Apollo overcame the Python by force; wherefore the earth endeavored ταρταρωσαι, to cast him into Tartarus. Tzetzes uses the same word, ταρταροω, for casting or sending into Tartarus; and the compound verb καταταρταρουν, is found in Apollodorus; in Didymus' Scholia on Homer; in Phurnutus, De Nat, Deor., p. 11, edit. Gale; and in the book Περι Ποταμων, which is extant among the works of Plutarch. And those whom Apollodorus styles καταταρταρωθεντας, he in the same breath calls ῥιφθεντας εις Ταρταρον, cast into Tartarus. Thus the learned Windet, in Pole's Synopsis. We may then, I think, safely assert that ταρταρωσας, in St. Peter, means not, as Mede (Works, fol., p. 23) interprets it, to adjudge to, but to cast into, Tartarus; ῥιπτειν εις Ταρταρον, as in Homer, cited below. And in order to know what was the precise intention of the apostle by this expression, we must inquire what is the accurate import of the term Ταρταρος. Now, it appears from a passage of Lucian, that by Ταρταρος was meant, in a physical sense, the bounds or verge of this material system; for, addressing himself to ΕΡΩΣ, Cupid or Love, he says: Συ γαρ εξ αφανους και κεχυμενης αμορφιας ΤΟ ΠΑΝ εμορφωσας, κ. τ. λ. 'Thou formedst the universe from its confused and chaotic state; and, after separating and dispersing the circumfused chaos, in which, as in one common sepulchre, the whole world lay buried, thou drovest it to the confines or recesses of outer Tartarus -
'Where iron gates and bars of solid brass
Keep it in durance irrefrangible,
And its return prohibit.'
"The ancient Greeks appear to have received, by tradition, an account of the punishment of the 'fallen angels,' and of bad men after death; and their poets did, in conformity I presume with that account, make Tartarus the place where the giants who rebelled against Jupiter, and the souls of the wicked, were confined. 'Here,' saith Hesiod, Theogon., lin. 720, 1, 'the rebellious Titans were bound in penal chains.'
Τοσσον ενερθ' ὑπο γης, ὁσον ουρανος εστ'απο γαιης.
Ισον γαρ τ' απο γης ες ΤΑΡΤΑΡΟΝ ηεροεντα.
'As far beneath the earth as earth from heaven;
For such the distance thence to Tartarus.'
Which description will very well agree with the proper sense of Tartarus, if we take the earth for the center of the material system, and reckon from our zenith, or the extremity of the heavens that is over our heads. But as the Greeks imagined the earth to be of a boundless depth, so it must not be dissembled that their poets speak of Tartarus as a vast pit or gulf in the bowels of it. Thus Hesiod in the same poem, lin. 119, calls it -
ΤΑΡΤΑΡΑ τ' ηεροεντα μυχῳ χθονος ευρυοδειης·
'Black Tartarus, within earth's spacious womb.'
"And Homer, Iliad viii., lin. 13, etc., introduces Jupiter threatening any of the gods who should presume to assist either the Greeks or the Trojans, that he should either come back wounded to heaven, or be sent to Tartarus.
Η μιν ἑλων ῥιψω ες ΤΑΡΤΑΡΟΝ ηεροεντα,
Τηλε μαλ', ἡχι βαθιστον ὑπο χθονος εστι βερεθρον,
Ενθα σιδηρειαι τε πυλαι, και χαλκεος ουδος,
Τοσσον ενερθ' αιδεω, ὁσον ονρανος εστ' απο γαιης.
'Or far, O far, from steep Olympus thrown,
Low in the deep Tartarean gulf shall groan.
That gulf which iron gates and brazen ground
Within the earth inexorably bound;
As deep beneath th' infernal center hurl'd,
As from that center to the ethereal world.'
Pope.
'Where, according to Homer's description, Iliad viii., lin. 480, 1, -
- - Ουτ' αυγης ὑπεριονος ηελιοιο
Τερποντ', ουτ' ανεμοισι· βαθυς δε τε ΤΑΡΤΑΡΟΣ αμφις.
'No sun e'er gilds the gloomy horrors there,
No cheerful gales refresh the lazy air,
But murky Tartarus extends around.'
Pope.
"Or, in the language of the old Latin poet, (cited by Cicero, Tuscul., lib. i. cap. 15),
Ubi rigida constat crassa caligo inferum.
"On the whole, then, ταρταρουν, in St. Peter, is the same as ῥιπτειν ες Ταρταρον, to throw into Tartarus, in Homer, only rectifying the poet's mistake of Tartarus being in the bowels of the earth, and recurring to the original sense of that word above explained, which when applied to spirits must be interpreted spiritually; and thus ταρταρωσας will import that God cast the apostate angels out of his presence into that ζοφος του σκοτους, blackness of darkness, (2 Peter 2:17; Jde 1:13), where they will be for ever banished from the light of his countenance, and from the beatifying influence of the ever blessed Three, as truly as a person plunged into the torpid boundary of this created system would be from the light of the sun and the benign operations of the material heavens." By chains of darkness we are to understand a place of darkness and wretchedness, from which it is impossible for them to escape.