The scoffers are not asking to learn. They are mocking. Barnes says their question implies that "the promise had utterly failed." Their reason sounds simple: "since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." Barnes explains that their argument rests on the stability of the laws of nature, and Gill says they reason "from the settled order of things." Gill takes "the fathers" as the earliest generations, such as Adam, Abel, and Seth, along with the patriarchs and prophets. Barnes thinks it "not improbable" that the scoffers meant aged and pious men of the apostles' own day, and that the reference was "probably designed to be ironical." Peter also exposes what lies underneath: they are "walking after their own lusts" (2 Peter 3:3).

Peter answers the scoffers with three reasons. First, it is not true that all things have continued unchanged: they "willingly are ignorant" that God's word made the world, and that "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished" (2 Peter 3:5-6). The same word now keeps the heavens and earth "reserved unto fire against the day of judgment" (2 Peter 3:7). Second, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8). Third, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). And the day will surely come, "as a thief in the night" (2 Peter 3:10).

"Scoffers" are people who deride and ridicule. Barnes notes that Jude uses the same Greek word and the KJV renders it "mockers" (Jude 1:18). "Coming" is the Greek parousia. Earlier in this letter Peter insisted that he and the other apostles "have not followed cunningly devised fables" when they made known "the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:16).

"Fell asleep" is a gentle way of speaking about death. Barnes notes that death is often represented as sleep in Scripture. Stephen, for example, "fell asleep" after praying for those who stoned him (Acts 7:60).

This question is really a challenge to God's faithfulness, and Peter's answer reveals God's character. What the scoffers call failure is actually mercy. God is "longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish" (2 Peter 3:9), and Peter tells believers to "account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation" (2 Peter 3:15). Every day the Lord waits is another day for people to repent.

Mocking "Where is...?" questions appear elsewhere in Scripture. People taunted Jeremiah, "Where is the word of the LORD? let it come now" (Jeremiah 17:15), and in Malachi's day they asked, "Where is the God of judgment?" (Malachi 2:17). Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary describes these scoffers as men "who make light of sin, and mock at salvation by Jesus Christ." Their question tells us more about them than about God.