Paul’s mind when he wrote 2 Thess. ii. 2f. Belial is not indeed named here, as he is in 2 Cor. vi. 15. But he is the opponent of Jesus the true messiah. He appears in human form (cf. Asc. Isa., iv. 2: “ Beliar the great ruler, the king of this world will descend
. in the likeness of a man, a lawless king’) as the arch-emissary or agent of Satan. The latter, whom Paul here as elsewhere (in consonance with Jewish tradition) keeps in the background, is the supreme opponent of God; but as God’s representative is the Lord Jesus Christ, so Satan’s active representative is this mysterious figure, whose methods are a caricature of the true messiah’s (see notes below on the passage). This is borne out by the contemporary sense of Βελίαλ as ἄγγελος τῆς ἀνομίας (Asc. Isa., Π. 4, etc.) or ἀνομία (ἀποστασία) in LXX. The man of lawlessness, whom Paul predicts, is thus one of whom Belial is a prototype. Only, the apostle fuses this παράνομος with the false messiah, originally a different figure, who is represented as the incarnation of Satan, the devil in human embodiment. That he expected this mysterious opponent to rise within Judaism is not surprising under the circumstances. He was in no mood, at this moment of tension, to think hopefully of the Jews. They were a perpetual obstacle and annoyance to him, ἄτοποι καὶ πονηρο. He had already denounced them as θεῴ μὴ ἀρεσκόντων (I., Π. 15), and from this it was but a step to the position, suggested by the tradition perhaps, that their repudiation of God’s final revelation in Jesus would culminate in an ἀποστασία, which wel- comed the last rival of Jesus as God’s messiah. His prophecy thus embodies a retort.1 “You Jews hate and persecute us as apostates from God; you denounce our Jesus as a false messiah. But the
‘In Dan. viii. 23 f. when the cup of Israel’s guilt is full (πληρουμένων τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν), the climax of their punishment came in the person of Antiochus Epiphanes, the presumptuous (ἡ καρδία αὐτοῦ ὑψωθήσεται, cf. 2 Thess. ii. 4) and astute (τὸ ψεῦδος ἐν χερσὶν αὐτοῦ . . « καὶ δόλῳ ἀφανιεῖ πολλούς, cf. 2 Thess. i. 9, 11). Paul, like the rest of the early Christians, still looked for some immediate fulfilment of this prophecy. In the contemporary malevolence of the Jews towards the gospel he saw a sign of its realisation, asthe allusion in 1 Thess. ii. 16 (εἰς τὸ ἀναπληρῶσαι αὐτῶν τὰς ἁμαρτίας) indicates. The penal consequence of this atti- tude must have also formed part of his oral teaching at Thessalonica, but he does not mention it till local circumstances drew from him a reminder of the final Deluder who must soon come (2 Thess. ii. 3 f.). It is important to notice this underlying tradition, or application of tradition, in the apostle’s mind, on account of its bearing upon the general harmony of the eschatology in the two epistles. Furthermore, since the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, the book of Daniel had made self-deification a note of the final enemy. Any vivid expectation of the End, such as that cherished by a Jewish Christian of Paul’s temperament, instinctively seized upon this trait of the false messiah.
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