Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Timothy · About this commentary
The Lord Stood by Me
2 Timothy 4:14-18
14 Alexander the coppersmith did much evil to me. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. · WEB
Everyone deserted him at the hearing, and his comment on it is a prayer that they not be charged with it.
Alexander the coppersmith did much evil to me. The response is handed over rather than acted on: the Lord will repay him. Paul warns Timothy to beware of him and leaves the account where he had said such accounts belong Romans 12:19.
Verse 16 is bleaker. At his first defense nobody came to help; all left him. Roman practice allowed supporters to stand with a defendant, and the empty benches would have been visible to the court.
Then the sentence that measures the man: may it not be held against them. It is what Stephen prayed while being stoned Acts 7:60, and Paul had been standing there Acts 7:58. The disciple who watched that death asks the same thing at his own.
Verse 17 supplies what the benches did not. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me — the verb means to take a position beside someone, which is exactly what no human did. And the purpose was not comfort: that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and all the Gentiles hear. His trial became a pulpit.
Rescued from the lion's jaws, he expects rescue from every evil work — and then names what that means, which is not release but a heavenly kingdom.
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