What Does “Private Interpretation” Mean in 2 Peter 1:20? It’s Not What Many Think

There are certain verses of the Bible that are often misapplied. This verse is one of them. It’s not that the truth that is taught is wrong or unbiblical, it’s just not the truth being taught in THIS particular verse.

Many have claimed that this verse is teaching that the Bible cannot have many different meanings or interpretations—that it cannot mean one thing to one person and something different to someone else. This truth is a good hermeneutical (Bible interpretation) principle. The Bible cannot mean what it never meant, and each verse of scripture has one meaning, although it may have many applications. The problem is that this verse is not teaching a hermeneutical truth.

Let’s look at what the verse says.

“Know this first”

This is a foundational principle to all that we believe in Christianity. Without this truth we cannot have New Testament Christianity as we understand it.

“That no written prophecy”

The Old Testament scriptures were known as the “writings.” That is the word that is used here. It is the word that signified the inspired Old Testament, in fact, all inspired writings as Peter understood them. The prophetic gift came to the Old Testament prophets so that they spoke God’s message to God’s people (and sometimes to the gentiles too). Some of these prophetic messages were written down. They were put in writing to be preserved for future generations.

“Is of any private interpretation”

The KJV and other translations do not use dynamic equivalent translations a lot, but they do so here. Any student of biblical Greek will be very familiar with the words loosely translated “private interpretation” here. It is the word students repeat over and over in all its various forms while learning verb tenses. It is the Greek word “to loose” (luo). The word ginomai has to do with the origin of the prophecies.  Where did they start?  Where did they come from?  The phrase is idios epiluseos ou ginomai—“generated from one’s own release or generated from one’s own private source. The idea is that the written prophecies are not some human being’s personal writing or personal opinion.

The reason that many get confused about the meaning here is the choice to use the word interpretation.  There are Greek words that mean to translate (1 Corinthians 12:10) or to explain or interpret (1 Corinthians 14:26).  Neither of those words is used by Peter here. When we think of “interpretation” we think of taking some existing message and translating or explaining its meaning.  This concept is not found in the text. Private origination would be a better way of saying it and it is a remark about where the scriptures originated, not their meaning or how they are used.

“For prophecy never came by the will of man”

Peter then reiterates the idea. The scriptures did not originate with a man or a group of men. God did not take what some man wrote and make it His own. Scripture originated in the mind of God, not the mind of man. The Bible is a supernatural book in its origin as well as in its quality.

“But Holy men of God spoke”

The idea of “holy men” in this verse is probably different than what we think as well. We usually think of someone that is holy as being very righteous or pious in their personal lives. In this case, holy probably means chosen and set apart for a particular purpose and that purpose was to be inspired writers of the Holy Scriptures.

“As they were moved along by the Holy Spirit”

It is the Holy Spirit that did the work. He was the One who chose these particular writers, and He is the One who moved them to write just as they did.

In the end, this verse is not about hermeneutics–as in how we interpret scripture–as much as it about the doctrine of inspiration itself—the supernatural character of the scriptures.