2 Timothy 4:18

ῥύσεται. The rec. text prefixes καί; it is omitted by אACD2* 17, the Bohairic and the Latin versions.

18. ῥύσεταί με ὁ κύριος�. The Lord, sc. Christ, will deliver me from every evil work. The change of preposition, ἀπό instead of ἐκ, after ῥύεσθαι is significant. ἐκ was used in 2 Timothy 4:17 because the Apostle was in the very jaws of the lion, before he was rescued; ἀπό is used here, because the evils contemplated are only potential, and the Apostle has not been actually in their thraldom. ἐκ, in short, indicates emergence from, ἀπό, removal from the neighbourhood of, a danger[526].

[526] This is brought out in Chase’s Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church, pp. 71 ff. The parallel between 2 Timothy 4:17-18 and portions of the Lord’s Prayer is fully traced at p. 119 ff. of the same work.

The deliverance of which St Paul speaks thus confidently is not a second deliverance ‘from the mouth of the lion’; that, he knew, he could not expect. But he will be delivered, if not from bodily pain, yet from ‘every evil work,’ from the opposition of adversaries without and from the conflict with temptation in his own heart. The prayer ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς� will be fully answered, but it will be by the gate of martyrdom that deliverance shall come. As Bengel has it: “Decollabitur? liberabitur, liberante Domino.” Cp. 2 Corinthians 1:9-10.

καὶ σώσει εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν αὐτοῦ τὴν ἐπουράνιον, and will save me unto His heavenly kingdom, a ‘praegnans constructio’ equivalent to ‘save me and bring me to,’ &c. The faithful martyr is ‘saved’ in the highest sense, for ὂς δʼ ἂν�, οὗτος σώσει αὐτήν (Luke 9:24). The exact phrase ἡ βασιλεία ἡ ἐπουράνιος does not occur again in St Paul (or, indeed, in the N.T.), but it is quite harmonious with his teaching about the Kingdom of Christ. cp. 1 Corinthians 15:25; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1, and (for the confident hope here expressed by the Apostle) Philippians 1:23; Philippians 3:20.

ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, ἀμήν, to Whom, sc. to Christ, be glory for ever and ever, Amen. That the doxology should be addressed to our Lord, rather than to God the Father (as e.g. at Philippians 4:20), will not surprise the attentive student of St Paul’s theology; cp. especially Romans 9:5. For εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας κ.τ.λ. see note on 1 Timothy 1:17.

The doxology, which was early added at the end of the Lord’s Prayer and is incorporated in the received text of St Matthew 6:13, deserves careful comparison with the verse before us. In the early part of 2 Timothy 4:18 we saw that a reflection might be traced of the petition ‘Deliver us from the evil one,’ and we now find that the thought of the heavenly Kingdom and the glory of Christ is derived from the doxology ὅτι σοῦ ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. Ἀμήν.