2 Peter 3:2

2 Peter 3:2. in order that ye may remember the words spoken before by the holy prophets. The importance of the testimony of prophecy (obviously here O. T. prophecy, and specially those sections of it which spoke of the Advent of Messiah) is again pressed, as was already the case in chap. 2 Peter 1:19, etc. In the parallel passage of Jude (Jude 1:17, etc.) this reference to prophecy, which is so characteristic of Peter, does not appear.

and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour by your apostles. Instead of the pronoun of the first person which leads to the rendering of the A. V., ‘the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour,' the best authorities give the pronoun of the second person. We thus get a sentence which is variously translated. Some, e.g., render it ‘your commandment of the Lord of the apostles,' meaning by that ‘the commandment given you by Him who is the Lord of the apostles.' Others put it thus: ‘your commandment of the apostles, of the Lord,' that is to say, ‘your commandment, which the apostles, nay, the Lord Himself, gave.' Literally, however, it may be rendered, ‘and your apostles' commandment of the Lord and Saviour,' i.e the commandment given by the Lord and Saviour, and made known to you by your apostles. ‘This is sufficiently in harmony with the parallel in Jude 1:17, and yields on the whole the most pertinent sense. The expression ‘your apostles may point to Paul and those who were united with him in the original evangelization of these parts. The ‘commandment' means here neither the Gospel generally (which is a sense too broad for it); nor the particular injunction directed by Christ against false teachers in such passages as Matthew 7:15; Matthew 24:5; Matthew 24:11 (which is too narrow a sense); far less the preaching of the prophecies as a charge committed to the apostles (Dietlein). It has substantially the sense which it had in Revelation 2:21, the new evangelical law of life, or the Gospel on its ethical side. The only difference is that, as the great subject now in band is the frivolous denial of the likelihood of Christ's Return to earth, this new evangelical law of life is presented specially in its opposition to the kind of life to which such a denial served as a temptation.