(4) Second Imprisonment. The case, as here stated, it must be admitted. is strongly in favor of our assigning the composition of this epistle to the time of Paul's first imprisonment at Rome. On the other hand, the difficulties lying in the way of this seem insuperable. Hug's reasoning as sumes that the epistle must have been written in the early part of the Apostle's imprisonment, else Timothy could not have been absent at the time of its composition. But that this is utterly inad missible the following considerations show :— (t) When Paul wrote to the Colossians, the Philippians, and Philemon, Demas was with him; when he wrote this epistle to Timothy, Demas had forsaken him, having loved this present world and gone to Thessalonica (iv:to).
(2) When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, Colos sians, Philippians, and Philemon, he was in good hopes of a speedy liberation from his imprison ment; when he wrote this epistle to Timothy he had lost all these hopes, and was anticipating death as near at hand (iv:6-8).
(3) At the time this epistle was written Paul had been, if not oftener, at least once, before the bar of the emperor, when he had offered his apol ogy (iv :to).
(4) Tychicus, the bearer of the letters to the Colossians, had been despatched from Rome be fore this epistle to Timothy was written (iv:12).
(5) At the time the epistles to the Colossians and Philemon were written, Aristarchus was with Paul; by the time this was written Aristarchus had left Paul (iv :rt). All these circumstances forbid our supposing that this second epistle to Timothy was written before the epistles above named, that is, in the early part of Paul's first imprisonment at Rome. Shall we then assign the epistle to a later period of that same imprison ment? Against this also lie difficulties. Before we can admit it we must suppose that Timothy and Mark, who did not accompany Paul to Rome, had shortly after followed him thither, and, after remaining awhile, left Paul, and were again re quested by him in this epistle to return; that dur ing the interval of their absence from Rome, Paul's first trial had occurred; and that, yet even before he had so much as appeared before his judges, he had written to his friends in terms intimating his full confidence of a speedy release (Phil. i:25; ii:24; Philem. 22). These circum stances may perhaps admit of explanation ; but there are others which seem to present insuper able difficulties in the way of the supposition, that this epistle was written at any period of Paul's first imprisonment at Rome.
(a) Paul's imprisonment, of which we have an account in the Acts, was of a much milder kind than that in which he was at the time lie wrote this epistle. In the former case he was permitted to lodge in his own hired house, and to receive all who came to him, being guarded only by a single soldier ; in the latter he was in such close con finement that Onesiphorus had no small difficulty in finding him, he was chained, he suffered evil even unto bonds as a malefactor, his friends had mostly deserted him, and he had narrowly es caped destruction from the Roman tyrant (i:16 18; ii:g; iv :6, 7, 8, 18).
(b) In ch. iv :13, he requests Timothy to bring with him from Troas some books, parchments, etc., which he had left at that place. If we suppose the visit here referred to the same as that mentioned in Acts xx :5-7, we must conclude that these docu ments had been allowed by the Apostle to lie at Troas for a space of seven or eight years, as that length of time elapsed between the visit to Troas, mentioned by Luke, and Paul's first imprisonment at Rome. This is surely very unlikely, as the documents were plainly of value to the apostle; and if by phia/onace in this passage, he meant a cloak or mantle, the leaving of it for so long a time unused, when it might have been of service, and the sending so anxiously for it, when it could be of little or none, as the Apostle's time of de parture was at hand, must be allowed to be not a little improbable.
(c) In ch. iv :2o, Paul speaks of having left Tro phimus sick at Miletus. Now this could not have been on the occasion referred to in Acts xx :15; for subsequent to that Trophimus was with Paul at Jerusalem (Acts xxi:29). It follows that Paul must have visited Miletus at a subsequent period; but he did not visit it on his way from Jerusa lem to Rome on the occasion of his first imprison ment; and this, therefore, strongly favors the hy pothesis of a journey subsequent to that event, and immediately antecedent to the writing of this epistle. The attempt to enfeeble the force of this by translating apelipon 'they left,' etc., and un derstanding it of messengers from Ephesus com ing to visit Paul, is ingenious, but can hardly be admitted, as no sound interpreter would forcibly supply a subject to a verb where the context it self naturally supplies one.