2 Timothy 2:26 - Exposition

They for that they, A.V.; having been taken captive by the Lord ' s servant unto the will of God for who are taken captive by him at his will, A.V. Having been taken captive, etc. This is undoubtedly a difficult passage. We will first take the individual words, and then turn to the general meaning. Recover themselves ( ἀνανήψωσιν ); only found here in the New Testament, and never in the LXX . In classical Greek, where it is, however, uncommon, it means literally "to recover from drunkenness," hence, "to come to one's self," "to come to a right mind" (see Steph., 'Thes.'). Snare ( παγίς ); as 1 Timothy 3:7 ; 1 Timothy 6:9 . Compare the use of παγιδεύω ( Matthew 22:15 ). Having been taken captive ( ἐζωγρήμενοι ); only found in the New Testament in Luke 5:10 besides this place, but common in the LXX . and in classical Greek, in the sense of "to take alive," of prisoners of war, who, if not ransomed, always became slaves of the conqueror. Here, therefore, the meaning is "having been captured and enslaved." By him (margin), ( ὑπ αὐτοῦ ) ; i.e. of course the devil, who had just been named as having ensnared them. Unto the will of him (margin), ( ἐκείνου θέλημα ) . The difficulty of the passage lies in the word ἐκείνου , which at first sight seems to indicate a different antecedent from the antecedent of αὐτοῦ . This grammatical difficulty has led to the strange rendering of the R.V., and to the wholly unjustifiable intrusion into the text of the words, "the Lord's servant" and of "God," producing altogether a sentence of unparalleled awkwardness and grotesqueness, and utter improbability. But there is no real difficulty in referring ἐκείνου to the same person as αὐτοῦ (meaning in both cases the devil), as in the passage from Plato's 'Cratylus,' cited by Huther, after De Wette, the cause of the use of ἐκείνου being that St. Paul was at the moment emphasizing the fact of these captives being deprived of their own will, and made subservient to the will of another. The passage may be paraphrased: "If peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth, so as to recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, after they had been led captive by him, so as to be no longer their own masters, but obliged to do his will."

The implied contrast is οὐ τὸ ἑαυτῶν ἀλλ ἐκείνου θέλημα , just as in the passage from the 'Cratylus,' p. 430, ἐκείνου is contrasted with γυναικός . The full passage is δεῖξαι αὐτῷ ἂν μὲν τύχῃ ἐκείνου εἰκόνα ἂν δὲ τύχῃ γυναικός . Another example of the transition from αὐτός to ἐκεῖνος is in John 1:7 , John 1:8 , οὗτος ἦλθεν εἰς μαρτυρίαν , ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτὸς ἵνα πάντες πιστεύσωσι δι αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἦν ἐκεῖνος τὸ φῶς, κ . τ . λ ., where there is a contrast between John as the witness and Christ as the true Light (compare, too, John 4:25 , where ἐκείνος has the force of "not you, but he"). For the general turn of phrase, comp. 2 Corinthians 10:5 , "Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ," where αἰχμαλωτίζοντες (see 2 Timothy 3:6 ) corresponds to ἐζωγρημένοι and εἰς τὴν ὑπακοὴν τοῦ ξριστοῦ to εἰς τὸ ἐκείνου θέλημα . It should be noted further that the sentence is certainly rather a peculiar one, from the use of such uncommon words as ἀνανήφω and ζωγρέω , and the mixture of metaphors. But the sense of the A.V. is fully borne out. The interpretation preferred by Bishop Ellicott is "they may recover themselves from the snare of the devil unto his will (viz. God's), having (previously) been led captive by him (viz. the devil)."