2 Peter 1:13

2 Peter 1:13. But I consider it right, so long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up in the way of reminder. ‘But' represents the sense better than the ‘And' of the R. V. Although he gives them credit for knowing these truths already, and being firmly grounded in them, he deems it, nevertheless, a duty not to be silent or regard them as beyond danger. Their danger, on the contrary, is so grave that he must speak to them as long as life lasts (comp. Philippians 1:7); and this with the special object of stirring them up, or rousing them (the verb occurs again in chap. 2 Peter 3:1, and elsewhere in the N, T. only in the Gospels, and there always with the literal sense, Mark 4:38-39; Luke 8:24; John 6:18), and keeping them, by continuous reminders, awake to all that spiritually concerns them. The body is here figuratively described as a tent or ‘tabernacle' by a word which occurs again in the figurative sense in the next verse, and once in the literal sense, viz. in Acts 7:46. It is a longer form of the term used by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 5:4, and of another which occurs repeatedly elsewhere, e.g. in the record of Peter's own words at the Transfiguration (Matthew 18:4; Mark 9:5, etc.). The figure was a somewhat common one in later Classical Greek, particularly in medical writers. It conveyed the idea that the body is the mere tenement of the man, and a fragile one, erected for a night's sojourn and quickly taken down. In the Book of Wisdom (Wis 9:15) we have the same figure, with a somewhat different application ‘a corruptible body weighs down the soul; and the earthen tent burdens the much-thinking mind.' The Christian Father Lactantius uses it thus: ‘This, which is presented to the eyes, is not man, but is the tabernacle of man; whose quality and figure is seen thoroughly, not from the form of the small vessel in which he is contained, but from his deeds and habits' (2 Peter 3:3, Ramage's rendering). Here, according to Bengel, ‘the immortality of the soul, the briefness of its abode in a mortal body, and the ease of departure in the faith, are implied.'