Found Out

Jefferson Vann

Jefferson Vann discusses the source and meaning of two Greek words in 2 Peter 3:10.

The struggle to establish the text of the New Testament and translate it accurately continues. In a recent devotional reading, I came upon an example of this fact. While reading 2 Peter 3:10 (Legacy Standard Version), I learned that the heavens will pass away and the earth and its works will be found out. The question of what Peter is describing in that verse is not the issue. He says he is describing the day of the Lord, and he says that on that day the elements will be destroyed with intense heat. The next verse repeats the same idea by saying that ‘all these things are to be destroyed.’

 According to verse 10, God intends to destroy the heaven in which He now dwells. Why? Has the universe in which we live been so badly marred by sin that God must destroy everything — including his own residence? But as a translator, I know that the term rendered ‘the heavens’ (οἱ οὐρανοὶ) is often translated as ‘the sky’ and rendering it as such in this verse would be both accurate and less theologically confusing.

 My next issue is not with mere translation, but concerns the matter of establishing the text. The verse says that the earth and its works will be found out. Early readers and copyists of the NT manuscripts had problems with the wording of that text. They could not see how the words ‘found out’ fit in. At some point in the later manuscripts (such as the TR), a different word was substituted for the more difficult εὑρεθήσεται.

 That word (κατακαήσεται) made much more sense to those readers. It aligns well with the theology of those Christians who believed that God would destroy sinners at the final judgment, not just discover them. Frankly, the newer reading fits more into this author’s view of final punishment as well. Like John the Baptist, I believe the fall of the wicked will be that they will be cut off at the roots — destroyed. Like Malachi, I believe that the destruction will leave nothing left to suffer eternally. They will be reduced to ashes and left neither root nor branch.

 But the discipline of establishing the text is not governed by whether or not the variant fits well into our theology. The question is essentially which gloss is the more likely original as penned by (in this case) the Apostle Peter. Our task is not to find words that read well or that fit within our presuppositions of what the text should say. We should seek to establish the text most likely to be what was said.

 The LSB made the correct choice here. One principle that scholars have relied on for establishing the most likely original text is that the more difficult gloss is probably the original. They surmise that a copyist is more likely to change a word if it does not seem to fit the sentence. The word translated ‘found out’ certainly qualifies. Once establishing the text, it then depends on the exegetes and teachers to explain why that gloss actually does fit within the sentence, and its role in the original author’s argument. I refer the reader to the beginning of the Apostle’s argument in this chapter. Peter spoke of mockers who would appear in the last days, deriding the notion of a literal second coming of Christ.

 Their argument was basically historical. They pointed out that all these centuries and millennia have passed and there has not been a literal second coming. Now Peter replies to that historical argument in kind. He goes back to the time of the flood and draws a comparison between the mockers who scoffed at Noah as he preached for a hundred years and only succeeded in rescuing his immediate family. Most of the world died in the flood because they backed the wrong argument. That argument was that such a thing has never happened, so it will not happen.

 What happened to those mockers who refused to listen to Noah’s warning? They were found out. The rains came, and they (and all those who followed them in unbelief) were drowned. Being ‘found out’ did not result in those mockers suffering eternal torment; the result of their being found out was their destruction. So Peter draws a direct comparison to the warning about the second coming, because those who refuse to listen to that warning will also be destroyed.

 While the words ‘burned up’ are most likely not within Peter’s original text, the context (particularly the word ‘destroyed’ in verses 10 and 11) explains the logic behind the later insertion. Furthermore, the fate of the Noahic mockers shows that to be ‘found out’ does not imply any eternal life in hell. To be found out has only one result: a justified destruction. That is the fate of the lost, and that will be the fate of all who reject the gospel and fail to heed the warning implied in the Christian doctrine of the second coming of Christ.