2 Timothy 1:15

οἶδας τοῦτο : There is a personal appeal for loyalty in this reminder. The whole paragraph, with its examples cited of disloyalty and loyalty, was intended as an object lesson to Timothy.

ἀπεστράφησάν με : The reff., with the exception of chap. 2 Timothy 4:4, are parallel to this use of the verb.

πάντες must not be pressed: it is the sweeping assertion of depression. If it had been even approximately true, Timothy would have had no church to administer. On the other hand, something less serious than apostasy from the faith may be alluded to, such as personal neglect of the apostle (cf. 2 Timothy 4:16, πάντες με ἐγκατέλειπον, and the contrast of Onesiphorus' conduct with theirs in the next verse), a thing which to us who see St. Paul through the halo of centuries of veneration seems painfully hard to understand. But it is abundantly plain that apostles did not during their lifetime receive that universal and unquestioning reverence from their fellow-Christians which we would have antecedently supposed could not have been withheld from them. Cf. 3 John 1:9.

οἱ ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ : Asia means the Roman province, which included Mysia, Lydia, Caria, great part of Phrygia, the Troad, and the islands off the coast.

This statement is most naturally explained of a defection in Asia of natives of Asia. Plummet conjectures that St. Paul had applied by letter from Rome for help to some leading Asiatic Christians, and had been refused. Of course it is possible that St. Paul refers to something that had taken place in Rome (so Bengel, who compares char. 2 Timothy 4:16). But all who are in Asia would be a strange way of referring to some Asiastics who had been in Rome and had returned to Asia; and though οἶδας τοῦτο is naturally understood as mentioning something of which Timothy had knowledge only by report, we cannot be sure that St. Paul intended here to distinguish οἶδας from γινώσκεις. Perhaps the defection had taken place during an absence of Timothy from Asia. Nothing else is known certainly of Phygelus and Hermogenes.