Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Timothy · About this commentary
Words That Spread Like Gangrene
2 Timothy 2:16-18
16 But shun empty chatter, for it will go further in ungodliness, · WEB
Empty talk is not harmless because it is empty — the letter gives it a medical prognosis and two names.
Shun empty chatter, for it will go further in ungodliness. The verb is one of forward progress, used ironically: this kind of talk does advance, just not toward anything good.
Then the diagnosis. Those words will consume like gangrene — gangraina G1044, a medical term used nowhere else in Scripture, describing tissue that dies and spreads the dying to what it touches. The image says three things at once. It moves; it destroys living material; and it does not stop on its own.
Two names follow, as with the deserters of chapter 1: Hymenaeus and Philetus. The letter names people, which is uncomfortable and consistent — Onesiphorus is named for standing, these for falling.
Their error is specified: saying that the resurrection is already past. It is not a denial of resurrection but a spiritualizing of it, which is more plausible and harder to answer — everything Christian is retained except the future bodily hope. And the effect is stated without exaggeration: overthrowing the faith of some. Not all, and not none.
settled What this mark means