2 Peter 1:21

The context

2 Peter 1 moves from the author's impending death to the transfiguration, cited as eyewitness testimony, and then to "the prophetic word," which he calls more fully confirmed. Verses 20 and 21 explain why that word can be trusted: it did not originate in human interpretation or human will.

The sentence sits in a letter concerned throughout with false teachers who, in the author's view, twist the Scriptures. The argument is about the origin of prophecy, offered as a reason to hold fast to what was handed down.

The words

"No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation" renders idias epilyseōs. Epilysis is rare, appearing only here in the New Testament, and carries the sense of a loosing or untying — hence "interpretation." The phrase most likely concerns the prophecy's origin, not the reader's exegetical rights.

Thelēma, "will," is the ordinary word for desire. The clause denies that prophecy originated in a human act of will.

Pheroumenoi, "carried along," is a present passive participle of pherō, to carry or bear. The image is of something moved by a force outside itself — the same verb family used of a ship driven by wind. The prophets are not described as authors who were assisted but as persons who were borne.

Elalēsan, "spoke," is the plain verb for speech, and it is what the carried-along ones did. The Spirit moves; the human beings speak. Both are in the sentence.

What this passage establishes

The prophetic writings have a divine origin. They did not arise from human initiative or the prophet's own construal of events, and the Spirit is named as the agency behind them. That is a claim about where the words came from.

What it does not establish

It does not forbid private Bible reading. This is the most common misuse of the verse. The sentence concerns how prophecy came to be, not who may interpret it afterward, and nothing here restricts the ordinary reader.

It does not specify a mechanism. "Carried along" is an image, not a theory. Whether inspiration was dictation, verbal guidance, or the concurrence of a human author's mind with the Spirit's intention is not stated.

It does not tell us which writings are prophetic. The verse assumes a body of recognized prophecy without listing it, and it settles nothing about the extent of the canon.

How the church has read it

Warfield's account of inspiration as organic — the Spirit so ordering the human author's life and thought that the words are both fully his and fully God's — is the classic Protestant attempt to do justice to both halves of the verse, written partly against a dictation model that reduces prophets to scribes. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) appeals to the text in the same vein. Eastern writers have generally left the mechanism undefined while affirming the fact.

First pass, written October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• The Word
• Statement of Faith
• Hasn't the Bible been changed by men over the centuries? How can anyone trust it?
• Could God have used fallible people to write an infallible book?
• How can you take the gospels as inspired when they don't even make that claim for themselves?
• Given that we don't have the original manuscripts, why would God have allowed variant readings to creep into the textual tradition?
• You say the Bible was inspired by God. Back up that assertion with proof.

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.