through which [waters] the then world, deluged with water, perished.
The verse points back to a single event in history: the flood that swept away the world of Noah's day. Peter uses it against people who say nature never changes, and the writers ask what perished, how far the water reached, and why the flood is denied.
Peter draws a line between two worlds, and the wording marks the earlier one as finished. One writer traces where the present order began:
The Apostle Peter, speaking of the world before the flood, calls it "the world that then existed" (2 Peter 3:6). That world has passed away forever. But he goes straight on to speak of "the heavens and earth that now exist." Here he means the world that started after the flood.
"Perished" is a strong word, but it does not mean the planet stopped existing. Scripture uses the same word elsewhere for things ruined rather than erased, translated "perish" in older versions:
"The skins will be destroyed" (Luke 5:37), that is, the new wine bursts the old skins, and they are made useless for the purpose they were made for. Again, "the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished" (2 Peter 3:6). The world was certainly not wiped out of existence.
The flood water was water God Himself had stored above and below:
Here we see that God destroyed the early population of the earth by the vast store of water He provided above and below. It overwhelmed man and beast, apart from those He preserved in the ark with Noah at His command. Genesis 7:11 points to this huge overflow: "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows (or floodgates) of the heavens were opened."
How far did those waters reach? Peter's phrase itself settles the question for some writers:
The flood was universal — absolutely universal. That seems to me to be clearly meant and intended, because it destroyed the world that then existed. God puts an end to the whole system of the world. His judgment of the earth and everything on it was as complete as His coming judgment by fire will be. Everything in the whole order and system of the world that had life perished.
Some people say everything has carried on unchanged since the world began. The flood answers them:
They reason from what they see, and draw conclusions about what will be. Faith turns away from what is seen and stands on the word of God. It knows such arguments are completely false. Things have not continued as they were from the beginning of creation. God has stepped in with striking judgments. The flood is the outstanding witness that God has broken into the ordinary course of nature.
The memory of the flood is not kept in the Bible alone:
There is hardly a country on earth without traditions, more or less true, of that solemn dealing with the whole inhabited earth. God kept Noah and his family safe in an ark, along with the animals that would otherwise have died in the waters. So people are without excuse. What else but the fact itself could produce a tradition found among all the races of mankind, north, south, east and west?
Peter says the ignorance is deliberate. One writer explains what makes the flood so unwelcome:
Ah! says Peter, you like to believe there was no flood, and I will tell you why. If you admit the flood, you admit the judgment of God on wickedness. And if you admit the judgment of God on wickedness once, then He will most likely judge a second time. So men will not have it. Their will is in question again. They are deliberately ignorant of the solemn fact that the world has once been judged. The world came up out of the waters by the word of God, and at His bidding those same waters swallowed it up, and everything on it, apart from those in the ark He provided.
Verse 6 is one step in a three-part argument, and the same word runs through all of it:
First, by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in with a judgment that brought the flood on the world of the ungodly, so that the world that then existed perished. Third, by His word He keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, until the day He judges the ungodly men of this generation.
- Word made it. God spoke the heavens and the earth into being. That same word rules everything that has happened to them since.
- Word ended it. At His command the water He had stored above and below broke loose, and it ended the whole order of life before the flood.
- Ruined, not erased. "Perished" means that world stopped serving the purpose God made it for. The planet itself did not stop existing.
- Word answers the scoffer. The claim that nothing ever changes falls to one fact of history. Nations everywhere remember the flood, and so does Scripture.
- Word warns us still. Men reject the flood because one judgment means another can follow. That is Peter's point: the same word keeps the present heavens and earth for fire.
But the present heavens and the earth by his word are laid up in store, kept for fire unto a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
Peter answers mockers who say the world has always run on unchanged, so Christ cannot be coming back. His reply rests on one thing: the word of God. That word made the heavens and earth, flooded them once, and now keeps them for fire.
Two facts about God carry the point.
(V. 7). If God brought the world into being by His word, He can surely end it by His word. If God has intervened in judgment, He can do so again.
The same writer sets out three acts of God, all carried by the same word:
First, that by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in to judge. He brought the flood on the ungodly world, and that world perished. Third, by His word God keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, until the day when He judges the ungodly men of this present generation.
To claim that nothing has ever interrupted nature, you must push one fact out of sight — the flood. Commentators say this blindness is real, and self-made.
They ask, "Where is the promise of His coming?" They claim that all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. It is the argument of "uniformity," pushed all the way. They ignore God's judgment by the flood... This is hidden from them, says the apostle. It is truly hidden, so they can be sincere in holding it. Yet it is the cunning of their own wills that hides it — and those wills so often deceive the sharpest minds.
The verse says this world is "stored up" and "kept" for fire. One writer applies that to everything men build.
God has but one way of purifying this sin-stained earth, and it is by fire... So that, on the mightiest monuments of man's skill and ingenuity, faith sees the words "Reserved to fire" written in letters that cannot be erased.
The reason is not that the world is old but that it is stained. One writer ties the fate of the creation to the fate of the man who ruined it.
This world is already under judgment, and it will soon vanish, for the present heavens and earth are "stored up for fire"... Why? The answer is this: the first creation will share the doom of the first man.
Another writer looks at the world as it stands today.
The world, as we look at it, in spite of all reforms and all outward improvements, is not such that anyone can easily believe a holy God will go on with it forever.
Peter calls it "the day of judgment"; three verses later he calls the same event "the day of the Lord." Commentators read these as one period.
These two expressions must clearly mean the same thing — they both refer to the same period... "The day of judgment," then, is the period when God destroys the heavens and the earth by fire.
How long is that day? One writer says Peter takes it in its widest sense.
Peter, and he alone, takes the day of the Lord to cover the whole of the thousand-year reign, and even what comes just before it and just after it... All these vast events fall within the day of the Lord — not within the thousand years, but within that day.
Why is the coming judgment heavier than the flood? One writer points to all that has happened since Noah's day.
The law, Christ's coming, and the gospel preached to every creature have made man's responsibility far greater. So his sin in rejecting the truth is far greater too... Such measureless guilt — rejecting the only, perfectly righteous One and His propitiation — will have to face God's extreme punishment by fire.
Smaller judgments already stand as previews. Of the fire that fell on Sodom, one writer observes:
This judgment was a sample of what is yet to come on a much greater scale in "the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."
- Word that made — the heavens and earth exist because God spoke; the whole verse rests on that single fact.
- Word that flooded — the same word once broke nature's routine. Scoffers must hide that fact to claim the world runs on unchanged.
- Word that keeps — the present world is not drifting. God stores it, holds it, and labels it "reserved to fire." Every human achievement carries that label.
- Word that names a day — Peter's "day of judgment" is his "day of the Lord." It is not an hour but a long period, reaching across the thousand-year reign and beyond.
- Word that raises the stakes — water answered an age of ignorance. Fire answers a world that has heard the gospel and refused the Righteous One.