Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Timothy · About this commentary
Come Before Winter
2 Timothy 4:19-22
19 Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the house of Onesiphorus. · WEB
The last words of Paul's last letter are names, a request about the weather, and grace.
Greet Prisca and Aquila. The couple had risked their necks for him years before Romans 16:3–4 and had first met him at Corinth as fellow tentmakers Acts 18:2–3. And the house of Onesiphorus — the household prayed for in chapter 1, greeted here without its head being mentioned again.
Verse 20 reports two men left behind, and the second detail is quietly important: Trophimus was left at Miletus sick. The apostle through whom extraordinary healings had been done Acts 19:11–12 left a friend ill and went on — recorded without explanation, and a useful correction to any account of healing that makes it available on request.
Be diligent to come before winter. The request is practical — shipping closed in the winter months, so a delayed Timothy would be a Timothy who arrived in spring, perhaps too late — and it sits beside the cloak request as the other half of the same cold.
Four more names, otherwise unknown, send greetings. Then the ending: the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, grace be with you. The last written word of the man who spent his life on that word is grace.
settled What this mark means