Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander
The former of these is mentioned in ( 2 Timothy
2:17 2 Timothy
2:18 ) and that part of faith he made shipwreck of, or erred
in, was the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, whereby the
faith of some nominal believers was overthrown; and this was
attended with the putting away of a good conscience, he seemingly
before had; for his profane and vain babblings increased to more
ungodliness: the latter seems to be the same with Alexander the
coppersmith, who did the apostle much evil, ( 2 Timothy
4:14 ) and it may be is the same with him who was at Ephesus
when the apostle was, there, ( Acts 19:33 Acts 19:34 ) and where
he might be now with Hymenaeus, with whom he might agree in his
erroneous opinions, and therefore are particularly mentioned,
Ephesus being the place where Timothy now was. It seems by their
names that they were both Greeks; Alexander is a known name among
the Greeks, since the times of Alexander the great, and even
became common among the Jews; (See Gill on Acts
4:6), and Hymenaeus was a name among the Grecians, from
Hymen, the Heathen god of marriage: one of this name is mentioned
among those said to be raised from the dead by Aesculapius
F17; there was also a bishop of
Jerusalem of this name F18.
Whom I have delivered to Satan;
not by excommunication, which is the act of a church, and not of
a single person; but by an apostolical power he had of delivering
the bodies of men into the hands of Satan, by him to be tortured
and afflicted, in order to bring them to a sense of their sins,
and as a chastisement and correction for them, and a token of
God's displeasure at them; (See Gill on
1 Corinthians 5:5).
That they may learn not to blaspheme;
or "that being chastised", corrected, or disciplined, "they might
not blaspheme", as they had before done; either by words,
contradicting, reviling, and scoffing at the doctrine of the
resurrection; or by their unbecoming lives and conversations,
giving themselves great liberty in sinning, supposing there was
no truth in that doctrine; whereby they not only blasphemed the
Christian religion themselves, but caused it to be evil spoken of
by others.