2 Pet 3:9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Pet 3:9 οὐ βραδύνει ὁ κύριος τῆς ἐπαγγελίας ὥς τινες βραδύτητα ἡγοῦνται ἀλλὰ μακροθυμεῖ εἰς ἡμᾶς, μὴ βουλόμενός τινας ἀπολέσθαι ἀλλὰ πάντας εἰς μετάνοιαν χωρῆσαι
2 pet 3:9 (Young's Literal) the Lord is not slow in regard to the promise, as certain count slowness, but is long-suffering to us, not counselling any to be lost but all to pass on to reformation,
G2248 hemas hay-mas' ἡμᾶς
accusative case plural of G1473;
us.
2 Pet 3:11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives
2 Pet 3:11 τούτων οὺν πάντων λυομένων ποταποὺς δεῖ ὑπάρχειν ὑμᾶς ἐν ἁγίαις ἀναστροφαῖς καὶ εὐσεβείαις
G5209 humas hoo-mas' ὑμᾶς
accusative case of G5210;
you (as the objective of a verb or preposition).
Seeing as the literal and Greek ἡμᾶς means us as against ὑμᾶς you I don't think the case is proven that US means only those being written to in verse 9 or the US of the whole of humanity.
Maybe Angela can weigh in on the Greek used.
Just got back from German class, doing noun cases, so either this is right up my alley, or I am completely burned out!
In any case, I went and read the whole chapter, before I even looked at this question.
First, it does not read
ἡμᾶς in the better and newer non-TR texts. It reads "
[FONT="]ὑμᾶς[/FONT]" which it should, because he is talking about you, and it is a grammatical error, to suddenly change tenses back and forth, in the same paragraph. This comes down to the issues with the 7 corrupted Greek texts the KJV used, and this is often found. Maybe some scribe wanted to be included, and made it we? (Us in the accusative.)
[FONT="]ὑμᾶς[/FONT] (used in both versus 9 and 11) is 2nd person plural, which means it is always translated as "you," plural in English. "Us" as you want it to be is, 1st person plural, it is connected to the subject "we" NOT "you." Regardless of the mistranslation of the KJV, which translates it "us-ward" which is just too obscure for me to care about.
Further, the preposition
[FONT="]εἰς [/FONT]is always found with the accusative. It has a broad range of meaning, unfortunately! Because the basic meaning is "into, in, among." But, I looked at a lot of translations, and basically they tend to "to" or 'toward." Normally, the word "to" is used with the dative, but in this case, "in you," makes no sense. But, it is used with the accusative.
In reading the chapter, there is no way, Peter suddenly deviates from the Beloved (verses 1 and 8, 14) (pl nominative) (
[FONT="]ἀγαπητοί[/FONT] in Greek) whom he is addressing. Especially when only one verse before, he is addressing the "Beloved" there is no way, he suddenly includes himself, switching tenses to 1st person plural, as opposed to 2nd person plural. This is not good grammar in any language.
So, in fact, to summarize and answer your question, Peter is definitely and certainly addressing the Beloved, NOT the whole world. God is waiting for all the ones he has chosen, to come to Christ. Not the whole world. Nothing else makes sense here! Nor do I think you can pull verse 9 out of context of the chapter, and make it about salvation, when the rest of the chapter has nothing to do with unsaved people, but is addressing saved believers and the subject is eschatology, not soteriology at all!
The question this chapter is answering is "Where is the promised return?" And then he details what has happened and will happen. Eschatology!
A final interesting perspective concerns that if we actually look at the verse, which is addressing Christians, how can we make it clearer? (Adding to the Bible, I agree, but not as a side margin which later gets incorporated into the text, as it so often does in the later Byzantine manuscripts) but, just something to clarify it for us. Just a thought, and certainly, not to be incorporated into the verse, which is why I bolded that part. Within the sentence structure, it does make sense.
"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone "OF YOU" to come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9
Hmm! Interesting how many times I have heard that verse pulled out of context. Thanks for making me take a closer look at it.