knowing this first, that [the scope of] no prophecy of scripture is had from its own particular interpretation,
Peter says there is one thing his readers must grasp "first of all" about the prophetic word. Does his sentence forbid ordinary people to interpret the Bible for themselves, or does it say something else about how prophecy holds together?
Much of the difficulty comes from one disputed word. Commentators say its plainest sense is not "private" but "its own":
"Its own" is the simplest, strictest and most common use of the disputed word, and it is the only sense that fits the context. It is hard to see why the King James Version and the Revised Version chose "private," except that they did not know what to make of it.
Read that way, the verse is not about who may interpret. It is about how a prophecy must be read:
No prophecy of Scripture is its own interpreter: you cannot interpret it by taking it on its own. That is the plain translation.
Older translations say "private." Some have used that word to keep the Bible out of ordinary hands. Commentators answer plainly:
Rome has used the word "private" to hold up its terrible lie that no private individual should ever interpret Scripture. As a result Rome discourages the reading of God's Word in every way... Only the prophetic Word is in view here... In interpreting prophecy, prophetic Scripture must be compared with prophetic Scripture. Prophecy must be taken as a whole.
That reply sets two limits. Peter has prophecy in view, not the whole Bible. And the liberty at stake is the soul's freedom to hear God for itself:
Taking single texts away from their context has often been disastrous for interpretation, as we all know. But it has nothing at all to do with the so-called "right of private judgment," which is better called the liberty of the soul to hear for itself what the Spirit makes known to everyone.
The positive teaching is that prophecy is one connected body, because one mind produced it. Verse 21 supplies the reason for verse 20:
It is instead a warning against treating each prophetic saying as if it stood alone — a self-contained statement to be interpreted apart from the whole body of prophetic teaching. All prophecy is connected and related, and can only be understood in connection with the whole. It was never spoken by the will of man, but by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. He used different men in different ages, but His one mind runs through it all.
If prophecy is one whole, it must have one destination. Commentators name it as the kingdom and glory of Christ:
They were all parts of one whole, with one and the same object: the kingdom of God. Each event was a step towards that object, a link in the chain of God's government that led to it. No link can be explained unless you grasp the aim of the whole — the revealed aim of God's counsels in the glory of His Christ.
A prophecy still speaks into a local event. But that event is never the whole story:
Local circumstances of the moment give the occasion for a prophecy, but it forms part of a great whole, and Christ the King is the centre of that whole. Taking it on its own is like cutting a branch off a magnificent tree that it belongs to.
Peter's phrase is careful. Not every predictive word in the Bible falls under it — a point that keeps the rule from being stretched too far:
He does not deny that many a prophecy had its scope only in one particular, passing event important enough to call for it... Take the dreams of Pharaoh in Genesis, and of his two officials before that. Take the prophecies of Agabus in the book of Acts about the famine and about the apostle Paul. Many such prophecies are recorded in the Old Testament. Yet none of them is a prophecy of Scripture in the sense meant here.
Reading a prophecy on its own is not just a mistake in method. It changes what the heart waits for:
Those who look for prophecy to be fulfilled before the Lord comes for us miss the joy of waiting for Christ. They see a close likeness between a prophecy and some passing event, but they do not know what it is to watch for the bright and morning star.
- One Author. Prophecy never came by the will of man. One Spirit spoke through many writers in many ages, and one mind runs through it all.
- One Body. Because the Author is one, no prophecy is self-contained; each is a link, and a link cut from the chain cannot be read.
- One Centre. It all points to the kingdom and glory of Christ. That is why one local fulfilment never uses up a prophecy.
- One Misreading. "Private" never banned ordinary readers from the Bible. Commentators call that a misuse of the word: Peter is talking about how prophecy is read, not about who may read it.
- One Result. Tie prophecy to passing events and you lose the waiting heart. Read it as one whole and you watch for Christ Himself.
for prophecy was not ever uttered by [the] will of man, but holy men of God spake under the power of [the] Holy Spirit.
Peter has just called the prophetic word a lamp shining in a dark place. Now he says where that word came from: not from a human being, but from God through men the Spirit carried along.
The first half of the verse rules out one source. Prophecy is not a talent a gifted person can develop.
The will of man could never produce prophecy. Only God knows the future, and He has spoken about the future.
One writer weighs the scope of what prophecy covers against what man's will could ever reach:
Man's will resists all this. Even if it were ever so eager to help, who is able except God to take in a range so vast, deep, and high? So the only possible power is that of the Holy Spirit. In His great love for man's blessing, God chose to tell us beforehand of those coming glories of Christ, just as through holy men He also predicted His sufferings.
Peter's phrase "carried along" points past the writers to Someone else.
Notice how verse 21 speaks of inspiration. "Holy men of God" spoke and wrote "moved by" or "borne along by" the Holy Spirit. They put their pens to paper under His power, so He is the real Author of what they wrote.
Peter's phrase "men spoke from God" also tells us who these writers were. (Older translations read "holy men of God.")
Those who wrote the books of the Bible were holy men of God, acknowledged by Him as His instruments. Moses was such a man of God (Psalm 90:1), as was Elijah, who could say, "the LORD... before whom I stand" (1 Kings 17:1). They stood before God, conscious that He was constantly looking on them.
Another writer notes how far their words ran past their own understanding:
By the Holy Spirit He moved them to speak far above the measure of their understanding. They took no place of authority, but in the lowliness of faith searched their own writings, wanting to find God's interpretation of them (1 Peter 1:10-12).
The Spirit did not turn these men into machines. Their personalities still show on the page.
He brings down the exalted one and lifts up the lowly one, putting them on one common level. He uses them as He finds them, making them the channels of His thoughts and not their own. Yet here is the remarkable fact: He never does violence to their individual character. Peter remains Peter and Moses remains Moses. Their abilities show in their writings. Their style is there. Everything there speaks of the man, yet nothing there fails to speak of God.
Peter writes here about men who spoke. One writer adds that inspiration does not stop with the speakers.
It is a distortion of the truth to say that the writers were inspired, but not the writings. If 2 Peter 1:21 supports the first, the claim for the second is even more explicit and directly to the point in 2 Timothy 3:16... Not only were the men inspired, but so, according to the apostle Paul, is the result.
The same conclusion is reached from the other direction: if what was said was inspired, writing it down loses nothing.
In 2 Peter 1:21 we get the claim in definite terms... for surely if the spoken prophecies were inspired, their being written down would not be less authoritative.
Verse 21 gives the reason for verse 20. Man had no hand in where prophecy came from, and one writer draws the consequence:
If man had no part in originating prophecy, then certainly mere man is not the interpreter of it.
Because one Spirit carried every prophet, no prophecy stands on its own.
No single prophecy must be read alone, as if it stood apart from the rest. Read each one in connection with the whole plan of it in the Word. "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man" — so it is not the expression of the many minds of men. "But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" — there is One perfect mind throughout it.
- Source — Prophecy did not rise out of human will. Only God knows the future, so only God could give it.
- Carried — "Carried along" means borne by another. The Spirit's power, not the writer's skill, produced the words, so He is the real Author.
- Vessels — The men were holy men of God, owned by Him as His instruments. They spoke far beyond what they understood.
- Preserved — The Spirit never crushed the man. Peter stays Peter and Moses stays Moses, yet every line still speaks of God.
- Result — One mind runs through the whole Bible. So read each prophecy with the rest, and take Scripture as God's authority, not man's.