Passage

2 Peter 3.9

Book: 2 Peter · NASB95

"The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9, NASB95)

Peter's explanation for why the parousia tarries: divine patience. The verse functions in modern theology as the single most-cited proof-text for God's universal salvific will, anchoring Arminian soteriology and resisting the harder Calvinist construals of election. It is also pastoral consolation against the charge that delayed final judgment proves indifference: the delay is mercy, not negligence. The interpretive battles over the verse turn almost entirely on the antecedent of "you" / "any" / "all" - is Peter's scope the elect, the church, or humanity as such?

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"7. but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. 8. But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

"9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

"10. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 11. Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness," (2 Peter 3:7-11, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"7. But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. 8. But don’t forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

"9. The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

"10. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. 11. Therefore since all these things will be destroyed like this, what kind of people ought you to be in holy living and godliness," (2 Peter 3:7-11, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"7. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 8. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

"9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

"10. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 11. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness," (2 Peter 3:7-11, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"7. and the present heavens and the earth, by the same word are treasured, for fire being kept to a day of judgment and destruction of the impious men. 8. And this one thing let not be unobserved by you, beloved, that one day with the Lord [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day;"

"9. the Lord is not slow in regard to the promise, as certain count slowness, but is long-suffering to us, not counselling any to be lost but all to pass on to reformation,"

"10. and it will come, the day of the Lord, as a thief in the night, in which the heavens with a rushing noise will pass away, and the elements with burning heat be dissolved, and earth and the works in it shall be burnt up. 11. All these, then, being dissolved, what kind of persons doth it behove you to be in holy behaviours and pious acts?" (2 Peter 3:7-11, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Peter the Apostle
Audience: Christian believers in Asia Minor and beyond, second-generation church facing scoffers who mocked the delayed parousia (cf. 3:3-4)
Location: composed in Rome during Peter's final imprisonment (traditional attribution)
Time period: composed c. AD 64-68, shortly before Peter's martyrdom under Nero

Theological reading

The verse answers an objection embedded in the chapter's opening: scoffers ask "Where is the promise of His coming?" (3:4) and conclude from Christ's apparent non-return that the Christian eschatological timetable has failed. Peter's response unfolds in two moves. First (3:8), divine and human time are not commensurable: "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years." Second (3:9), the delay is not failure but forbearance: the parousia waits because God's patience holds open the window for repentance.

The exegetical center of gravity is the prepositional phrase "patient toward you" (Greek makrothymei eis hymas, with strong manuscript support over the variant eis hēmas, "toward us"). Reformed exegetes (John Owen, John Piper) read "you" as referring to Peter's Christian addressees and thereby take "not wishing any to perish" as restricted to the elect among them: God patiently delays so that the not-yet-converted elect can be gathered in. Arminian and most contemporary exegetes (Thomas Schreiner, Douglas Moo, even moderate Reformed commentators like Richard Bauckham) read the scope as universal: God's salvific will extends to all humans, and the delay serves universal evangelistic reach. The grammar permits both, and the verse alone cannot settle the broader Calvinist-Arminian debate; it is a major data point but not by itself decisive.

Apologetically the verse functions on three fronts. Against atheist arguments from the problem of evil ("if God were good, He would have intervened by now"), the verse offers a soteriological theodicy: delayed judgment is a function of divine mercy directed at the repentance of the very people raising the objection. Against the charge that hell is incompatible with divine love, the verse establishes that perishing is contrary to what God wishes - though not contrary to what He permits, given His commitment to creaturely freedom. Against the soft-universalist case that all will ultimately be saved, the verse paradoxically pulls both ways: it grounds the universal-will claim universalists need, but its emphatic call to repentance assumes that perishing is a live possibility for which the response window is real and limited.

The verse pairs naturally with 1 Timothy 2.4 ("God desires all people to be saved"), Ezekiel 18.23 and Ezekiel 33.11 ("I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked"), and John 3.16 (the kosmos as the object of God's saving love). Together these constitute the Arminian core text-base for universal salvific will, all of which Calvinist exegesis answers via distinctions between God's revealed will (will-of-precept) and decretive will (will-of-decree).

Key words

G3341 - metanoia, metanoia (Strong's G3341). "Repentance"; literally a change of mind, but in NT usage a reorientation of the whole person toward God. The verse's telos.
G4982 - sozo, sozo (Strong's G4982). Background "save" concept; not present in this verse but the perish/salvation contrast is the operative semantic field.
G2962 - kyrios, kyrios (Strong's G2962). "The Lord"; whose patience and whose promise are at issue.
Pending lexicon expansion for apollymi (G622, "to perish") and makrothymeo (G3114, "to be patient/long-suffering") - both load-bearing here but not yet built.

Theological themes

Universal salvific will. God's expressed wish is that no one perish; the verse is load-bearing for the doctrine that God's saving love is directed toward all humanity, not toward an arbitrary subset.
Divine patience. The parousia's delay is mercy, not negligence; eschatological waiting is itself a form of divine grace.
Repentance as response. The wish-counterpart to perishing is not bare survival but metanoia; the verse refuses any framing of salvation that bypasses moral and spiritual reorientation.
Theodicy from delay. Why God permits ongoing evil rather than ending history is partly because the same time-window that suffers evil also permits late repentance.
Calvinism-Arminianism faultline. The verse is one of the small set of passages that genuinely cannot be neutralized by either tradition's distinctive distinctions; both sides have to do real exegetical work here.

Cross-references

1 Timothy 2.4, the parallel "God desires all men to be saved"; together with 2 Peter 3:9 forms the core Arminian text-base.
Ezekiel 18.23 and Ezekiel 33.11, the OT antecedents for divine reluctance toward the perishing of the wicked.
John 3.16, "God so loved the world"; universal-scope love language paralleling 2 Peter 3:9's universal-scope wish language.
Romans 9, the locus classicus for the Calvinist side of the soteriological debate that 2 Peter 3:9 anchors the Arminian side of.
Matthew 23.37, Jesus's lament over Jerusalem ("how often I wanted to gather... and you were unwilling"), which carries the same divine-wish-vs-creaturely-resistance grammar.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.