Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Thessalonians · About this commentary
The One Who Restrains
2 Thessalonians 2:5-7
5 Don’t you remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? · WEB
Paul reminds them of teaching he gave by mouth and did not write down — which means the restrainer is a thing the text deliberately leaves unexplained.
Don't you remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? The question is mildly exasperated and enormously consequential. Whatever Paul had taught them orally is assumed here rather than repeated, and the sentences that follow are compressed because his readers already had the key.
Now you know what is restraining him — katechō G2722, to hold down or hold fast — to the end that he may be revealed in his own season. Verse 7 says the mystery of lawlessness already works, and that one who restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. So three things are stated: the lawlessness is already active, something currently holds it back, and that restraint will end.
What is not stated is what the restrainer is. The passage moves between a neuter what and a masculine one who, and Scripture never returns to identify either. Paul could have written it and chose not to. The name Paul left unwritten stays unwritten — and the timing, not the identity, is what he actually used to calm them.
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