For if God spared not [the] angels who had sinned, but having cast them down to the deepest pit of gloom has delivered them to chains of darkness [to be] kept for judgment;
God did not spare angels. That is the first of three examples Peter uses to prove that the judgment hanging over false teachers is real. It also raises hard questions. Which angels are these? What is the "hell" He cast them into? Is there any way back for them?
Peter reaches back into history for his proof, and the pattern he finds is a warning for today.
The Apostle gives three solemn examples from real history. They prove that lawlessness and rebellion bring down the overwhelming judgment of God. First, God cast the angels who sinned into the deepest pit of gloom, and holds them in chains, waiting for their final judgment. Second, in Noah's day the judgment of the flood overwhelmed the old world of ungodly people. Third, God condemned and overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. These solemn judgments... are examples for the ungodly people who come after. The Christian world ignores these warnings. It falls into the same lawlessness and rebellion, and it will meet the same overwhelming judgment.
Two things in this verse are worth a close look: which angels Peter means, and the word behind "hell."
In verse 4 it is "angels when they sinned," not "the angels that sinned." That second wording would mean the whole company; but the apostle speaks only of a part even of those that fell. Tartarōsas is the word behind "cast them into hell," and it occurs here only in the New Testament. It means hurling into the lowest abyss. In the same verse the copies differ, and the reading gives either "pits" or "chains." The more ancient copies lean to "pits," while Jude's wording may have suggested "chains."
Peter borrows a word the pagan world already used for the worst place it could imagine:
Tartarus was the pagan Roman's idea of hell: a deep pit of gloom, its gates of rock guarded by the Furies, whose every hair was a serpent.
So who are they? One writer first rules out the obvious answer:
Clearly this passage does not mean Satan and the angels who joined his rebellion before man was ever created. Satan and the fallen angels are not now in the lowest pit, waiting there helplessly for the judgment. They are not in chains but free, and Satan, as the prince of this world, uses his angels to carry on his work. Who, then, are these angels? They are the beings described in Genesis 6:1-4 as the "sons of God" (in the Old Testament this term means angels) who came down and mingled with the daughters of men.
Commentators differ on how far to press that. One writer leaves the question open, and says what these angels are waiting for:
They are kept in everlasting chains under darkness, waiting for God's judgment in the great day to come. Whether this refers to only a certain number of such fallen angels, or whether it is a moral description of them all — confined and in darkness, though still busy in evil work under Satan's direction — it may be difficult to say.
Jude writes about the same angels, but he makes a different point.
The connection between this verse and Jude 6 is plain, but the contrast is striking. Peter speaks of angels who sinned; Jude says they left the place God first gave them. Peter speaks of self-will; Jude speaks of apostasy. Jude is describing the terrible corruption in the Church, and the saint of God has to make his way carefully through it.
For these angels there is no gospel. The reason lies in how the Saviour came:
He became man to die for men; He did not become an angel to die for angels. So the grace of God appeared, bringing salvation to all people, though it does no good if they do not believe. But not a word of God speaks of salvation for angels. The holy angels do not need it; the fallen ones await their everlasting doom.
Verse 4 opens with "if." The answer does not come until the end of a long sentence.
Read verses 4 to 10, and notice that not one full stop comes until the last word of verse 10. They are one tremendous sentence: "If God did not spare the angels... and did not spare the old world... and rescued righteous Lot... the Lord knows how to rescue the godly... and to keep the unjust... to be punished." This is a most comforting fact for the believer, however fearful it is for ungodly people.
- Not spared — Peter argues downward from the highest creatures. God did not spare angels who sinned, and He will not spare the rebels who come after.
- Not vague — Tartarōsas, the word behind "cast them into hell," is used only here and means hurled into the lowest abyss. Peter's wording points to a part of the fallen angels, not all.
- Not Satan's crowd — these angels are bound and helpless. Satan and his host still roam and work. Some writers link these angels to Genesis 6, and others leave the question open.
- Not saved — Christ became a man to die for men, not an angel to die for angels. For these beings there is no rescue, only a judgment kept in store.
- Not finished — the "if" of verse 4 waits for its answer. The God who keeps the unjust for judgment knows how to rescue the godly.
and spared not [the] old world, but preserved Noe, [the] eighth, a preacher of righteousness, having brought in [the] flood upon [the] world of [the] ungodly;
Peter is arguing against false teachers, and he argues from history. The flood is his second example: God did not spare a whole world, yet He kept one household safe.
Peter's examples answer a modern picture of God — a God too soft to act.
The "god" invented by "modern theology" is too weak or too indifferent to act. He spares everybody and everything, so that he can show himself to be "love." That "god" is no more the God of the New Testament than of the Old. The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old, as this Scripture stresses. When the angels sinned long ago, He did not spare them, but holds them in chains reserved for judgment. The world before the flood filled up the cup of its wickedness. God did not spare them, though He saved a little remnant of eight souls in the ark.
Where the ESV says "herald of righteousness," the older wording quoted here is "preacher of righteousness." The title describes what Noah preached, not what his preaching achieved.
Noah is called "a preacher of righteousness." We do not read that he announced good news, or that he invited men to take refuge in the ark. He bore his testimony in "the world of the ungodly" and presented righteousness as God's demand. The hundred and twenty years of Genesis 6:3 may be the period of God's patience before God sent the flood. If so, Noah preached for a hundred and twenty years without making a single convert.
Preaching today has the same subject, but it comes after the cross.
Noah had been a preacher of righteousness, just as Enoch had been a prophet of the Lord's coming. He is the first preacher we have any record of. His theme is the very thing that stands at the front of the gospel preached today, as Romans 1:17 declares. But today that righteousness is revealed in Christ and established in His death and resurrection. God presents it as the basis of blessing for men. Noah had to preach God's righteousness. Man's violence and corruption had outraged it, and it demanded judgment.
Some read the hundred and twenty years of Genesis 6 as a limit on human life. Kelly takes them another way.
Peter draws attention to the interesting fact that Noah was not only a righteous man but "a preacher of righteousness." The hundred and twenty years that the Lord spoke of covered the building of the ark and Noah's preaching. It has nothing to do with the length of human life, as some have imagined. It has to do with God's patience before "the flood came and took all away."
That waiting time has a parallel today.
Christ was not personally present then, yet He preached to men by the Spirit of God through Noah. Today Christ is no longer present on earth, but the Holy Spirit has come, and the servants of the Lord preach the gospel. In Noah's day the great mass was disobedient to the preaching... The days before the flood were the time of "the long-suffering of God." God waited to bless men before the judgment fell. In the same way, the present time is the day of God's grace before the judgment that is coming.
The order matters: the eight are inside before a drop falls.
Before God's government sent out its judgment, the chosen family, and all with them, were safely shut in the ark, the vessel of grace... God in grace saved Noah before God in government swept the earth with judgment. It is grace and government over again. The one acts in salvation, the other in judgment. God is seen in both. Every piece of the ark bore the sweet mark of grace. Every wave of the flood reflected the solemn decree of government.
Older translations call Noah "the eighth" — that is, Noah with seven others. The number itself carries meaning.
EIGHT. A new start, outside the order of creation yet connected with it — so it points to resurrection. Circumcision was on the eighth day, when a new fellowship began. Eight souls were saved in the ark, to begin a new world.
Peter's point is not archaeology. What happened once sets the shape of what is coming.
He and his house had found grace in the sight of the Lord, while the mass of the ungodly world, who rejected His truth and His Spirit that strove with them, were not spared but dealt with in judgment. It is so now. Another day is coming in which the Lord will judge the ungodly and unbelieving, while His people will be saved.
- Not spared. God did not spare the ancient world. The God of the New Testament is the same God who acted then.
- Spoken to. Before God acted, He spoke. Noah presented righteousness as God's demand, and preached without gaining a single convert.
- Waited. The hundred and twenty years covered the building of the ark and Noah's preaching. That patience matches today's day of grace before judgment falls.
- Saved first. The family was safe inside before the waters rose. Grace saves and government judges, and we see God in both.
- New world. Eight souls came through the water to begin a new world. God still shelters His own before judgment falls.
and having reduced [the] cities of Sodom and Gomorrha to ashes, condemned [them] with an overthrow, setting [them as] an example to those that should [afterwards] live an ungodly life;
Peter points back to Sodom and Gomorrah, the third of three cases he uses to prove that God judges. Why did God keep this ruin on the record, and who is meant to read it?
The verse closes a series of three. Each case makes the same argument.
The apostle gives three solemn illustrations from real history. They prove that lawlessness and rebellion call down the overwhelming judgment of God. First, the angels that sinned have been cast into the deepest pit of gloom, held in chains, awaiting their final judgment. Second, in the days of Noah, the flood overwhelmed the old world of the ungodly. Third, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were condemned and overthrown. In these solemn judgments God stepped in upon the ordinary laws of nature and the course of the world. They are examples for the ungodly who come after. Christendom pays no attention to these warnings. It is falling into the same lawlessness and rebellion, and it will meet the same overwhelming judgment.
The flood swept away a world; Sodom was a local ruin. Scale is not what makes this judgment weigh most.
The apostle brings forward another divine judgment, not so vast as the flood, but even more solemnly significant, though on a small scale.
The way these cities fell is part of the point. No human hand carried out the sentence.
There the bold, monstrous depravity of mankind sank to its lowest depths. It cried aloud for heaven's open and angry vengeance... Jehovah carried out His judgment on these cities in perfect righteousness. He set an example to those who would live an ungodly life. He did not act through the hand of man in providence. He Himself rained sulphur and fire out of heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah.
A dictionary of Bible words gives the sense of Peter's Greek word here, hypodeigma:
ὑπόδειγμα 'example, pattern.' 2 Peter 2:6.
The ruins and even our vocabulary still carry that example, and it points forward as well as back.
The miracle was fire from the Lord out of heaven. It started the mighty blaze and eruptions that blasted these four cities out of existence, and left their sites to this day as an example. The memory of the evil and its judgment has lasted. Our language still keeps the word "sodomy" for sin of an especially vile and unnatural kind. This judgment was also a sample of what is yet to come on a much greater scale, in "the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly" (2 Peter 3:7).
Peter names the cities but not their particular sin.
In this chapter Peter does not bring out the grace of God at all. He is thundering at unrighteousness... Peter then looks at the cities of the plain — especially Sodom and Gomorrah. He does not say anything about the special sin there, but looks at it in a general way.
A God who never judges is a comfortable idea. It is not the God of the Bible.
"Modern theology" has invented a "god" in its own mind. This "god" is too weak or too indifferent to judge, so it spares everybody and everything, and by that shows itself to be "love". Such a "god" is not the God of the New Testament, and not the God of the Old either. The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old, as this Scripture emphasizes... Later He overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, yet He delivered righteous Lot. So it shall be again. He will deliver the godly and keep the unjust for judgment, especially when they are marked by loose living and contempt for authority.
after-note-removed: none
- Third proof. Angels, then the flood, then Sodom. Three real events, one verdict: lawlessness pulls down the judgment of God.
- Smaller, weightier. The overthrow of the cities was far smaller than the flood, yet even more solemn in meaning.
- Direct fire. No army, no accident. God Himself rained sulphur and fire from heaven, so no one could mistake whose judgment it was.
- A pattern, not a memory. The word means example or pattern. The ruined sites, and even our language, keep the warning in view — a sample of the day of judgment still to come.
- Addressed to those after. God set the example for people who would live ungodly later. That puts Christendom — the world that calls itself Christian — in front of the mirror, not only Sodom.