What Does 2 Peter 3:12 Mean?
Looking toward and hastening toward the coming of the day of God, in which the heavens, burning, shall come unbound, and the building blocks shall melt in scorching heat?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?THE KEY
The word translated “dissolved” means “loosened”: even the heavens are pictured as coming unfastened.
THE MEANING
You are looking toward the day of God and hastening toward its arrival, a day pictured with the heavens burning and the elements melting in fierce heat. Even the structures that seem most fixed stand within this vision of coming unmaking.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the visible order holding your world together is permanent; even the heavens and elements are subject to unmaking.
THE ROOT
λυθήσονται
luthēsontai
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
To loosen, unbind, or release.
“come unbound” in this verse is luthēsontai. The verb beneath “dissolved” carries the sense of something being loosened or unbound. In this verse, that image reaches all the way to the heavens and the elements.
ALSO GROWS
lyō: Loosen; unbind.
λύω
This is the verb used in the verse and in Jesus’ command to “Loose him” when Lazarus comes out bound in graveclothes (John 11:44).
apolyō: Release; dismiss.
ἀπολύω
This related verb uses the same root for releasing someone, showing how loosening can mean letting a person go.
katalyō: Loosen down; dismantle or destroy.
καταλύω
The same root appears in a word for taking something apart, adding a sense of unmaking to the verse’s image.
στοιχεῖα
stoicheia
GROWS FROM
στοιχ-
stoich-
A row or ordered sequence; by extension, an element or basic constituent.
“building blocks” in this verse is stoicheia. The word can refer to basic constituents or elementary principles. Here, even the world’s fundamental elements are pictured as melting in the heat.
ALSO GROWS
stoicheion: An element or elementary principle.
στοιχεῖον
This is the singular form of the word translated “elements,” naming a basic constituent of the order that is melting.
stoicheō: Walk in line; keep in step.
στοιχέω
This related verb appears as “walk” in Galatians 5:25, linking the word family with moving in an ordered line.
THE PATTERN
What is made can be shaken, changed, and removed, while what endures remains.
They perish, but you stand. All of them wear thin like a garment; as a robe you exchange them, and they are exchanged.Heaven and earth pass by, but my words do not pass by.And this, “Yet once more,” shows the setting elsewhere of what is shaken, as of what has been made, so that what is not shaken may remain.THE THREAD
The one who had died came out, his hands and feet bound in strips of cloth, and a cloth wrapped his face. Jesus said to them, Untie him, and let him go.The same Greek verb translated “dissolved” here appears in Jesus’ command, “Loose him,” as Lazarus comes out bound in graveclothes. The shared word carries the image of what is held fast being unbound, from a person’s wrappings to the elements of the heavens.
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