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On the Greek text. The Greek throughout follows the standard critical text — uniform in its main wording across the modern editions (NA28, SBLGNT, THGNT), and itself an ancient, public-domain text; NA28's distinctively copyrighted critical apparatus is not reproduced.

The Second Epistle of Peter — Interlinear: Themes, Outlines & Translation Notes

A consolidated companion to the 2 Peter data set: every chapter of 2 Peter (1–3) rendered as a six-tier Greek reverse-interlinear (Greek · gloss · parsing/case · syntax · semantic force · lexical note), with per-verse discourse analysis and a chapter argument-outline.

This document gathers the theme, the argument outline (the outline movements authored into each data file), and the translation / textual / exegetical notes (the text_note of each file, reproduced verbatim) — followed by a summary of the major translation and interpretive cruxes that were deliberately annotated rather than silently resolved. It is part of the same project as the Pauline volumes, James, and 1 Peter; 2 Peter is the apostle's farewell, fixing the church on true knowledge against false teachers and scoffers who mock the Lord's coming. The Greek follows the standard critical text (uniform across NA28 / SBLGNT / THGNT in its main wording, and itself an ancient public-domain text); the copyrighted NA28 apparatus is not reproduced.

Scope

Chapter Verses Words annotated Outline movements
2 Peter 1 21 384 4
2 Peter 2 22 370 3
2 Peter 3 18 342 3
Total 61 1,096 10

Each annotated word carries Greek, a working gloss, color-coded grammatical case, parsing (Tense·Voice·Mood·Person·Number + lemma), a Wallace-style syntactic-function label, an aspectual semantic-force label (verbal forms), and a condensed lexical note.


The argument of the book

The macro-structure of the whole letter — its major movements — under which the chapter-by-chapter detail below unfolds. Peter writes a testament: a call to grow in the knowledge of Christ, a polemic against false teachers (closely parallel to Jude), and a defense of the certainty of the Lord's coming. (Section divisions are interpretive; the more common analysis is generally followed.)


Chapter-by-chapter

2 Peter 1 — ΠΕΤΡΟΥ Β′ Α′

Theme. God's divine power has already granted everything for life and godliness and the precious, very great promises of sharing the divine nature; therefore supplement your faith with the chain of virtues and make your calling and election sure — a knowledge grounded not in cleverly devised myths but in the apostles' eyewitness of the Majesty on the holy mountain and in the more sure prophetic word, spoken by men carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek follows the standard critical text of 2 Peter 1, uniform in its main wording across the modern editions (NA28, SBLGNT, THGNT) and itself an ancient, public-domain text; NA28's distinctively copyrighted critical apparatus is not reproduced. Verse punctuation, paragraphing, and capitalization are editorial and conventional. A few points are worth flagging. At v.1 the editions divide over the spelling Συμεών (read here) versus Σίμων; the construction τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is a single article governing two nouns (the Granville Sharp construction), most naturally rendered 'our God and Savior Jesus Christ.' At v.3 the editions divide over ἰδίᾳ δόξῃ καὶ ἀρετῇ ('by his own glory and excellence,' read here) versus διὰ δόξης καὶ ἀρετῆς ('through glory and excellence'). At v.4 some witnesses read the perfect δεδώρηται and the demonstrative is variously placed (τὰ τίμια καὶ μέγιστα ἡμῖν ἐπαγγέλματα). At v.17 the wording of the Father's voice (οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός μου, εἰς ὃν ἐγὼ εὐδόκησα) varies slightly among witnesses and against the Synoptic parallels. At v.21 the editions divide over ἅγιοι θεοῦ ἄνθρωποι ('holy men of God') versus the better-attested ἀπὸ θεοῦ ('from God') with ἄνθρωποι, the latter read here. Orthographic variants (movable-ν, ι-subscript) are not noted. The chapter has 21 verses; none is legitimately omitted by the critical text. Beyond the apparatus, note the chapter's verbal architecture: ἐπίγνωσις / γνῶσις ('knowledge') frames the opening and the virtue-chain (vv.2, 3, 5, 6, 8) against the heretics' counterfeit; ἐπιχορηγέω returns in the passive (vv.5, 11), so that the lavish supplier of virtue is himself lavishly supplied entrance; the σκήνωμα ('tent') and ἔξοδος ('departure') images frame Peter's farewell (vv.13–15); and the verb φέρω ('bear, carry') binds the Father's voice 'borne' from heaven (vv.17–18) to the prophets 'carried along' by the Spirit (v.21).

2 Peter 2 — ΠΕΤΡΟΥ Β′ Β′

Theme. The polemic against the false teachers: as false prophets shadowed Israel, so destructive teachers will arise within the church — denying the Master who bought them, peddling licentiousness for gain — but God, who judged the sinning angels, the flood-world, and Sodom while rescuing Noah and Lot, knows how to keep the unrighteous for the day of judgment; bold, greedy libertines in the way of Balaam, they are waterless springs reserved for the nether gloom, apostates worse off than before, the dog returned to its vomit and the washed sow to the mire.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek follows the standard critical text of 2 Peter 2, uniform in its main wording across the modern editions (NA28, SBLGNT, THGNT) and itself an ancient, public-domain text; NA28's distinctively copyrighted critical apparatus is not reproduced. Verse punctuation, paragraphing, and capitalization are editorial and conventional. A few points of variation are passed over without a marginal note: at v.4 the editions divide between σειροῖς ('chains/ropes,' read here with NA28/SBLGNT) and σιροῖς/σειροῖς ζόφου ('pits of gloom,' P72 B C and the Byzantine tradition), the two being near-homophones differing only in sense, and the rare verb ταρταρώσας ('having cast into Tartarus') is uniform; at v.11 some witnesses add παρὰ κυρίῳ ('before the Lord') after κατ' αὐτῶν, the shorter text being printed; at v.13 the editions divide over ἀδικούμενοι ('suffering wrong,' read here) versus κομιούμενοι ('receiving as wages') and over ἀγάπαις ('love-feasts,' so some) versus the better-attested ἀπάταις ('deceptions,' printed); at v.15 the prophet's father is named Βοσόρ (a transliteration of Hebrew Beʿor reflecting an Aramaizing or dialectal pronunciation), some witnesses reading Βεώρ to conform to the LXX of Numbers; at v.17 a minority adds εἰς αἰῶνα after the cloud-clause; at v.18 the editions divide over ὄντως ('actually,' read here) versus ὀλίγως ('barely, just'). The chapter has 22 verses; none is legitimately omitted by the critical text. The chapter runs in close parallel with the Epistle of Jude (esp. Jude 4–16): the angels who sinned, the libertines' presumption against the 'glories,' the way of Balaam, the waterless springs and the gloom of darkness reserved — the literary relationship (Petrine use of Jude, Jude's use of Peter, or a common source) is debated and is flagged where the wording diverges. Note further the chapter's dense vocabulary of judgment and destruction — ἀπώλεια ('destruction') tolling through vv.1–3, the rare ταρταρόω (v.4, a NT hapax), the φθορά/φθείρω wordplay (v.12), and the two proverbs of v.22 (the dog of Prov 26:11 and the washed sow) sealing the indictment.

2 Peter 3 — ΠΕΤΡΟΥ Β′ Γ′

Theme. Against the last-days scoffers who mock the delay of the parousia, Peter reframes the wait as the patience of God — not slowness but mercy, granting room for repentance — and presses the certainty of the day of the Lord, coming like a thief to dissolve the present heavens and earth in fire and yield new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells; therefore be diligent, found spotless and at peace, and grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek follows the standard critical text of 2 Peter 3, uniform in its main wording across the modern editions (NA28, SBLGNT, THGNT) and itself an ancient, public-domain text; NA28's distinctively copyrighted critical apparatus is not reproduced. Verse punctuation, paragraphing, and capitalization are editorial and conventional. The chapter's principal text-critical crux is at v.10, where the modern critical editions print εὑρεθήσεται ("will be found/laid bare," the harder reading, adopted here) against the Byzantine κατακαήσεται ("will be burned up") and the various conjectures (οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται, "will not be found"; ἀφανισθήσονται; ῥυήσεται); some witnesses read λυθήσεται ("will be dissolved") under assimilation to v.11. Other points passed over without a marginal note: at v.10 the editions divide over the connective and word order of the opening (ἥξει δὲ ἡμέρα κυρίου ὡς κλέπτης); at v.11 the participle λυομένων ("being dissolved," present, read here) is read by the best text against the future; at v.18 the closing doxology's final ἀμήν is read by the majority though omitted by a few witnesses. Orthographic variants (movable-ν, ι-subscript, the spelling ταχινήν) are not noted. The chapter has 18 verses; none is legitimately omitted by the critical text. Beyond the apparatus, several renderings rest on flagged interpretive choices: the construal of δι' ὕδατος at v.5 (local "amid" or instrumental "by"); the antecedent of the plural δι' ὧν at v.6; the bold σπεύδοντας at v.12 ("hastening" the day, taken transitively, rather than merely "eagerly awaiting"); and the unique phrase ἡμέραν αἰῶνος at v.18 ("the day of eternity"). The chapter is woven together by the keyword λύω (vv.10, 11, 12), the antithesis between the scoffers' wrong reckoning (ἡγοῦνται βραδύτητα, v.9) and the readers' right one (σωτηρίαν ἡγεῖσθε, v.15), the πάρειμι/παρουσία thread of the awaited coming (vv.4, 12), and the contrast of the "unstable" who twist Scripture (ἀστήρικτοι, v.16) with the "steadfastness" the readers are to keep (στηριγμοῦ, v.17).


Major translation & exegetical cruxes

Where the Greek legitimately admits more than one rendering or reading, the point was flagged in the lexical notes and chapter text_notes rather than decided silently; the more common analysis was generally taken and the alternative noted. The principal cruxes in 2 Peter:

Reference Crux Discussion
Reference Crux Discussion
--- --- ---
1:1 τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ — "our God and Savior Jesus Christ" A single article governs the two nouns (the Granville Sharp construction): θεοῦ and σωτῆρος share one referent, Jesus Christ, so the verse predicates full deity of him; rendered "our God and Savior Jesus Christ," not "of our God and (the) Savior Jesus Christ." (So again at v.11, "our Lord and Savior.")
1:4 θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως — "partakers of the divine nature" The boldest soteriological phrase in the NT; taken as moral and incorruptible communion with God's character and immortality (the contrast is φθορά, "corruption," in the same verse), not an ontological merger of essence — the Eastern theme of theosis read within its ethical frame.
1:14 καθὼς καὶ ὁ κύριος ... ἐδήλωσέν μοι The Lord's disclosure of Peter's imminent death most likely recalls Jn 21:18–19; a separate, later revelation is possible. Either way it grounds the urgency of the farewell section.
1:19 βεβαιότερον τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον — "the prophetic word made more sure" The comparative βεβαιότερον is ambiguous: either the Transfiguration has "made the prophetic word more sure" (confirmed by fulfillment, read here) or the apostles possess "something more sure than" the experience itself, i.e. Scripture. The former best fits the eyewitness argument of vv.16–18.
1:20 ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως οὐ γίνεται — "is not a matter of one's own interpretation" The hapax ἐπίλυσις ("loosing, explanation, release") and ἴδιος ("one's own, private") yield the chapter's classic crux: does it deny that the prophet's message arose from his own origination/impulse, or that the reader may privately interpret Scripture? The explanatory γάρ of v.21 ("for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man") favors the question of origin — prophecy's source is the Spirit, not the prophet's will — and is taken so here, the alternative noted.
2:4 σειροῖς ζόφου / ταρταρώσας — 'chains of gloom' / 'having cast into Tartarus' σειροῖς ('chains') is read with NA28/SBLGNT over the near-homophone σιροῖς ('pits,' P72 B C, Byzantine); ταρταρόω, a NT hapax, borrows the Greek name for the deepest abyss of punishment — vivid imagery for the angels' custody, not an endorsement of pagan myth (cf. Jude 6, δεσμοῖς).
2:1 τὸν ἀγοράσαντα αὐτοὺς δεσπότην ἀρνούμενοι — 'denying the Master who bought them' The strong δεσπότης ('owner of slaves') with the redemption verb ἀγοράζω raises the question of whether the false teachers were ever truly redeemed; read most simply as covenant/redemptive language whose denial repudiates the cross — the verse trades on the scandal of bought slaves disowning their owner.
2:5 ὄγδοον Νῶε δικαιοσύνης κήρυκα — 'Noah … an eighth, a herald of righteousness' ὄγδοον is the idiom 'Noah with seven others' (the eight saved, 1 Pet 3:20), not 'the eighth in sequence'; 'herald of righteousness' reflects a Jewish tradition (Josephus, 1 Clement) of Noah preaching repentance to his generation.
2:10 δόξας οὐ τρέμουσιν βλασφημοῦντες — 'they do not tremble to blaspheme the glories' δόξαι ('glories') are most likely angelic dignities/beings (cf. Jude 8); the libertines revile what even the greater angels will not (v.11) — the antecedent of κατ' αὐτῶν (the glories, or the teachers) is itself debated.
2:13 ἀδικούμενοι / ἀπάταις — 'suffering wrong' / 'deceptions' ἀδικούμενοι ('being wronged,' a bitter wordplay with μισθὸν ἀδικίας) is read over κομιούμενοι ('receiving as wages'), and ἀπάταις ('deceptions') over the near-homophone ἀγάπαις ('love-feasts,' so Jude 12); the variant would have them carousing at the church's agapē.
2:15 τοῦ Βαλαὰμ τοῦ Βοσόρ — 'Balaam son of Bosor' Βοσόρ transliterates Hebrew Beʿor (Num 22:5) with an Aramaizing/dialectal vocalization; some witnesses read Βεώρ to conform to the LXX. The 'way of Balaam' types the mercenary false prophet who 'loved the wages of wrongdoing.'
2:18 ὀλίγως / ὄντως ἀποφεύγοντας — 'barely' / 'actually escaping' ὀλίγως ('barely, just,' a NT hapax) is read over ὄντως ('really'); the rendering 'barely escaping' frames the victims as recent, still-vulnerable converts, sharpening the predators' guilt.
2:20 γέγονεν … τὰ ἔσχατα χείρονα τῶν πρώτων — 'the last state worse than the first' Echoing Jesus' saying (Mt 12:45), the re-entangled apostate ends worse than before; with v.21 ('better never to have known') the passage poses the perennial question of the perseverance and culpability of those who knew 'the way of righteousness' and turned back.
2:22 Κύων … ἐξέραμα / Ὗς λουσαμένη … βορβόρου — the dog and the sow The first proverb is Prov 26:11; the second (the washed sow returning to the mire) is proverbial, perhaps from the Story of Ahikar or common lore. Both depict an unchanged nature: outward cleansing without inward renewal, the apostate reverting to type (cf. the 'irrational animals,' v.12).
3:5 δι' ὕδατος — "through / amid water" The construal of διά is debated: local ("the earth holding together in the midst of the waters") or instrumental ("formed by means of water"); the ambiguity feeds the water-then-fire typology of vv.6–7.
3:8 μία ἡμέρα ... ὡς χίλια ἔτη — "one day as a thousand years" Citing Ps 90:4, the chiasmus relativizes the "delay": divine time is not human time, so the wait is no measure of God's faithfulness — not a formula for calculating the End.
3:9 οὐ ... μὴ βουλόμενός τινας ἀπολέσθαι — "not willing any to perish" God's saving will (πάντας εἰς μετάνοιαν χωρῆσαι) reinterprets the delay as patience; whether "all" is universal in scope or refers to "you" (the elect/readers, εἰς ὑμᾶς) is the classic interpretive divide, flagged not resolved.
3:10 εὑρεθήσεται — "will be found / laid bare" (vs. κατακαήσεται, "will be burned up") The chapter's major text-critical crux: the modern editions print the harder εὑρεθήσεται against the smoother Byzantine "will be burned up." Taken as forensic — the earth and its works "laid bare / found out" before God's judgment — not destroyed without trace; the awkwardness is the very mark of authenticity.
3:12 σπεύδοντας τὴν παρουσίαν — "hastening the coming" σπεύδω may be transitive ("hastening" the day, the bold notion that holy living speeds the End) or intransitive ("being eager for"); the transitive is taken, with the day's "coming" as its object.
3:16 ὡς ... τὰς λοιπὰς γραφάς — "as also the rest of the Scriptures" Peter classes Paul's letters with αἱ λοιπαὶ γραφαί, "the rest of the Scriptures" — an early, striking witness to a developing canon-consciousness that ranks the apostolic writings as γραφή alongside the OT; the "ignorant and unstable" (ἀμαθεῖς, ἀστήρικτοι) twist (στρεβλοῦσιν) both to their own ruin.
3:18 εἰς ἡμέραν αἰῶνος — "to the day of eternity" A unique NT phrase fusing the eschatological "day" with eternity; likely the everlasting day inaugurated at Christ's coming, the doxology being addressed to Christ himself — a high-Christology ascription.

How the data set is organized

The interpretive tiers (syntactic function, semantic force, discourse structure, and the proposed argument outlines) are interpretive by nature; where readings legitimately differ, the more common analysis was generally chosen, and the lexical notes are condensed orientation rather than a substitute for a lexicon (e.g. BDAG) or a full commentary.