The angels in Tartarus

A couple of comments relating to the reference to “Tartarus” in 2 Peter 2:4…

1. The allusion here is to the fallen angels or Watchers of Hellenistic-Jewish apocalyptic tradition (cf. Jude 6; 1 Enoch 6-16). The thought is only that they are kept securely in Tartarus, the place of the dead, until a final judgment, not that they are tormented there; and there is no suggestion in the context that humans are also suffering in Tartarus. The idea is basically the same as the chaining of Satan in the “abyss” in Revelation 20:2-3. The Hellenistic-Jewish motif constitutes some sort of overlap between the Old Testament story of the “sons of God” who mate illicitly with the “daughters of man” in Genesis 6:1-4 and the “early Greek theogonic myths, in which the ancient giants, the Cyclopes and Titans, were imprisoned in Tartarus, the lowest part of the underworld” (R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 249).

2. Judgment on humans in Peter’s argument here consists simply of destruction: the flood which destroyed an ungodly generation, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the explicit statement that the false teachers who oppose and deceive the Christian community are “bringing upon themselves swift destruction (apōleian)” (2:1) and will “also be destroyed (phtharēsontai) in their destruction (phthorai)” (2:12). The day of the Lord, when it eventually comes, will result in the “destruction (apōleias) of the ungodly” (3:7). Even in this very apocalyptic Letter there is no reference to the eternal conscious torment of the wicked.