Jer 17:15, 2Pe 3:3-4 | JFB | STEP | 14-18. Prayer of the prophet for deliverance from the enemies whom he excited by his faithful denunciations. Heal ... save-- not only make me whole (as to the evils of soul as well as body which I am exposed to by contact with ungodly foes, ), but keep me so. my praise-- He whom I have to praise for past favors, and therefore to whom alone I look for the time to come.

‏ Jeremiah 17:15

14-18. Prayer of the prophet for deliverance from the enemies whom he excited by his faithful denunciations.

Heal ... save--not only make me whole (as to the evils of soul as well as body which I am exposed to by contact with ungodly foes, Jr 15:18), but keep me so.

my praise--He whom I have to praise for past favors, and therefore to whom alone I look for the time to come.

‏ 2 Peter 3:3-4

3. Knowing this first--from the word of the apostles.

shall come--Their very scoffing shall confirm the truth of the prediction.

scoffers--The oldest manuscripts and Vulgate add, "(scoffers) in (that is, 'with') scoffing." As Re 14:2, "harping with harps."

walking after their own lusts--(2Pe 2:10; Jude 16, 18). Their own pleasure is their sole law, unrestrained by reverence for God.

4. (Compare Psa 10:11; 73:11.) Presumptuous skepticism and lawless lust, setting nature and its so-called laws above the God of nature and revelation, and arguing from the past continuity of nature's phenomena that there can be no future interruption to them, was the sin of the antediluvians, and shall be that of the scoffers in the last days.

Where--implying that it ought to have taken place before this, if ever it was to take place, but that it never will.

the promise--which you, believers, are so continually looking for the fulfilment of (2Pe 3:13). What becomes of the promise which you talk so much of?

his--Christ's; the subject of prophecy from the earliest days.

the fathers--to whom the promise was made, and who rested all their hopes on it.

all things--in the natural world; skeptics look not beyond this.

as they were--continue as they do; as we see them to continue. From the time of the promise of Christ's coming as Saviour and King being given to the fathers, down to the present time, all things continue, and have continued, as they now are, from "the beginning of creation." The "scoffers" here are not necessarily atheists, nor do they maintain that the world existed from eternity. They are willing to recognize a God, but not the God of revelation. They reason from seeming delay against the fulfilment of God's word at all.