Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach

v.20 – Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.
Knowing this first; either, principally and above other things, as being most worthy to be known; or, knowing this as the first principle of faith, or the first thing to be believed. That no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation: the Greek word here used may be rendered, either, 1. As our translators do, interpretation, or explication; and then the meaning is, not that private men are not to interpret the Scripture, only refer all to the church; but that no man nor company of men, no church nor public officers, are to interpret the Scripture of their own heads, according to their own minds, so as to make their private sense be the sense of the Scripture, but to seek the understanding of it from God, who shows them the meaning of the word in the word itself, (the more obscure places being expounded by the more clear,) and by his Spirit leads believers, in their searching the Scripture, into the understanding of his mind in it: God himself being the author of the word, as ver. 21, is the best interpreter of it. Or, 2. Mission or dismission; a metaphor taken from races, where they that ran were let loose from the stage where the race began, that they might run their course. The prophets in the Old Testament are said to run, as being God’s messengers, Jer. 23:21, and God is said to send them, Ezek. 13:6, 7. And then this doth not immediately concern the interpretation of the Scripture, but the first revelation of it, spoken of in the next verse; and the question is not, Who hath authority to interpret the Scripture now written? but, What authority the penmen had to write it? and consequently, what respect is due to it? and why believers are so carefully to take heed to it? And then the meaning is, that it is the first principle of our faith, that the Scripture is not of human invention, but Divine inspiration; that the prophets wrote not their own private sense in it, but the mind of God; and at his command, not their own pleasure.

Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1853), 921.

v.20 – every prophecy of scripture does not come about from one’s own interpretation It is not to be kept by any man to himself. No apostle, no prophet, could hedge up a promise, and say, “This was mine, and nobody else’s.” It is a common heritage of all the saints. Every promise is within the boundary of the covenant of grace, and all who are in that covenant are heirs of all the promises, to whomsoever they were made.

Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon Commentary: 2 Peter, ed. Elliot Ritzema and Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Spurgeon Commentary Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 2 Pe 1:20.