2 Thessalonians 2 Bible study: Stand firm

The chapter opens: "Now, brothers, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we ask you" (2:1) "not to be quickly shaken in your mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter as if from us, saying that the day of Christ has already come." (2:2) "Let no one deceive you in any way. For it will not be unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction." (2:3) "He opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, setting himself up as God." (2:4). These notes give 2:1-4 as the WEB has them, and add nothing to their words. They don't say what the spirit, word or letter of 2:2 was, or who was saying it, and they name no one and nothing in 2:3-4, then or now.

Isaiah 11:4→leads to2 Thessalonians 2:8

Isaiah says of the shoot from the stock of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1), "He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; and with the breath of his lips he will kill the wicked" (Isaiah 11:4). Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy (2 Thessalonians 1:1) write "concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thessalonians 2:1), and say of "the lawless one" (2 Thessalonians 2:8) that "the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the manifestation of his coming" (2 Thessalonians 2:8). The letter doesn't name Isaiah, so setting the two side by side is a reading, and nothing is claimed about the Greek. It rests on a shared subject: one who kills the wicked with the breath of his mouth. One reading hears Isaiah 11:4 in the letter's words, spoken there of the coming of the Lord Jesus. Another reads Isaiah 11:4 of the shoot's just rule over the earth (Isaiah 11:3-5), with nothing said of the lawless one, and reads the letter's words on their own. This line names no one, then or now, as the wicked of Isaiah 11:4 or the lawless one of the letter.

στηρίζωsterizosay stay-REED-zo

Strong's: "to set fast, i.e. (literally) to turn resolutely in a certain direction, or (figuratively) to confirm". "comfort your hearts and establish you in every good work and word" (2:17): behind establish is this verb. The letter has it once more, in the next chapter: "But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you" (3:3). Those are its only two uses in 2 Thessalonians (in all eight editions TAGNT compares). Favor's Luke 9 studies it and counts it in Luke.