Right. = )
One thing to bear in mind when considering this passage is, just what v.3a's "because [it is] [conjunction] IF NOT/UNLESS" connects BACK TO (per the "conjunction" and the "particle of qualified negation")...
... and that is, Paul is saying (v.3a) the "
BECAUSE [
it will not be present;
CONJUNCTION]
UNLESS / IF NOT [particle of qualified NEGATION]" ABOUT what the FALSE CLAIM (v.2) was "
purporting"
"IS" (i.e. "that
the DAY OF THE LORD [a TIME PERIOD of JUDGMENTS unfolding]
IS ALREADY HERE / IS PRESENT [perfect indicative; G1764 -
https://biblehub.com/greek/1764.htm ; 2Th2:2 -
https://biblehub.com/text/2_thessalonians/2-2.htm ]";
(Paul's TWO CHPTS are both addressing this issue, and his response covering the true "SEQUENCE" between the one thing ["our
episynagoges unto Him"] and the other thing [the PRESENCE and EXISTENCE of the (
earthly-located) day of the Lord and its JUDGMENTs unfolding on the earth OVER SOME TIME]--ONE THING is said to be "FIRST" [
sequentially FIRST] before the other thing ["the DOTL"
earthly time-period] can ACCURATELY BE SAID to exist [be "PRESENT"] and unfold upon the earth as it is slated to do)
The wording in v.2 [the content of the FALSE CLAIM] is
not, "[purporting] that the day of Christ IS AT HAND [near-approaching]," but rather [the content of the FALSE CLAIM] is "[purporting] that the day of the Lord IS ALREADY HERE / IS PRESENT" [presently existing...in their present circumstances and experiences... i.e. in their present day]...
This is the issue [i.e. the FALSE CLAIM] that Paul is addressing in these 2 chpts of this 2nd epistle to the Thessalonians (a very
"troubling"-to-their-minds matter)... and he is setting the record straight as to the CORRECT FACTS of the matter (in contrast to, and with regard to, the FALSE CLAIM he refers to in v.2)... He supplies the SEQUENCE... that settles the matter, once and for all, to their distraught minds (caused by the FALSE CLAIM "that the day of the Lord IS PRESENT / IS ALREADY HERE" v.2).
The very thing that the FALSE CLAIM (v.2) was saying "IS PRESENT," Paul is addressing specifically (v.3a), by saying "
it will NOT BE [
present] UNLESS shall have come THE DEPARTURE FIRST and [
distinctly]..." (we see that
one thing as stated as being "FIRST," but
two things are stated as being evidences that a statement such as "
the day of the Lord IS PRESENT"
would indeed be actually true--
It wasn't, and Paul is telling WHY it is NOT SO.)
[
quoting from Wm Kelly's commentary on 2Thess2, where he explains the difference between how some teach this passage and what the passage actually speaks to instead...]
"The "long and complicated series of events" to be developed, the very commencement of which was retarded by an obstacle then in being while the apostle wrote,
was to crush, not the waiting for Christ's coming as a proximate hope, but
the false statement that the day of the Lord [i.e. a TIME PERIOD] was there already. The designing men in question [
v.2] did
not set themselves systematically
to urge the nearness of His coming, which all the New Testament does;
their pretension to spiritual inspiration,
their solemn utterance,
their forgery of a letter under Paul's name, were all to give colour and currency to the wholly distinct and false insinuation that
the day of the Lord was [
already] come then and there [
in their PRESENT experience / their CURRENT-day time-frame].
"Hence it was not enthusiastic and feverish excitement associated with the expectation of Christ's coming and the fruition of the Christian's joy with Him in glory. It was the operation of dismay and terror,
as if that day [i.e. A TIME PERIOD] of unsparing judgment and of inevitable horror had set in on them. To be "shaken" from their [or, in] mind or "agitated" (σαλευθῆםבι) is descriptive of the disquiet and perturbation caused by fear; still more plainly does it flow from the same source to be "frightened" or "troubled" (θροεῖףטבι), which (less, if possible, than s.) suits the impatient and impetuous enthusiasm of a wrongly excited hope. [
Kelly is saying, it wasn't THAT that agitated them.] It is in a quite different connection that we read in the last chapter of disorderly brethren who did not work as became them: spurious hope might produce this result;
but nothing of the kind is implied here in 2 Thess. 2.
"It will be seen that all this warping of details, as well as misinterpretation as a whole, by men otherwise to be respected,
turns on the erroneous assumption that the express subject of discourse is the second personal coming of our Lord; and that it is to guard against the notion that His personal coming was "at hand" or imminent. Not so: this is divine truth everywhere taught in the New Testament, and nowhere so constantly, clearly, and urgently as in these Epistles.
The apostle is really exposing and uprooting the delusion that the day of the Lord was now present. Do those confusing expositors aver that the Thessalonian dealers in false alarm as to that day thought or pretended that the Lord Himself was come or present in power and glory? The fact is, that on the contrary the apostle begs the saints, by His coming which would gather them together to Him in perfect peace and endless joy, not to be troubled with the deceptive cry
that the day so awe-inspiring had begun [
by this, Kelly means the same as what he said previously by the words, "as if that day [i.e. A TIME PERIOD] of unsparing judgment and of inevitable horror had set in on them"]. This cry is nowhere imputed to a misconstruction of the apostle's words in the first epistle. Even if we punctuate with Lachmann, and Theile, etc., or with Webster and Wilkinson,
the only real meaning is the claim of a spirit of communication, oral ministry, and a letter, falsely attributed to the apostle. Of course it in no way emanated from really earnest Christians, but from fraudulent men who misled them. Tertullian and Chrysostom are right; Whitby, etc., quite wrong."
--William Kelly, commentary on 2 Thessalonians 2 (from BibleHub)
[
end quoting; bold and underline mine;
a few bracketed inserts mine for clarification purposes (italicized and underlined); parentheses original]
--
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/kelly/2_thessalonians/2.htm