Alexander the Smith

Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord

reward him according to his works: of whom be thou ware also; for he hath greatly withstood our words. A.V.

Alexander the smith wrought me (lit., shewed me) many a mischief; the Lord will requite him according to his works; a man against whom thou too must be on thy guard, for all too much did he withstand our discourses.

AGAIN a personal reference is before us, and again it is one of the kind which makes an ‘internal note’ of truth in our precious Epistle — a reference so detached, so totally unlike a contrived allusion to known events or to a known person, that no antique fabricator would have devised it. Outside this passage we know literally nothing of this Alexander; no real reason connects him with the Alexander of 1 Tim. i. 20; possibly on purpose to disconnect him with that man, he is here called ‘the coppersmith,’ or more simply (so the word chalceus may be rendered) ‘the smith, perhaps a blacksmith. The words breathe unanxious fact and authenticity.

We can only conjecture what the ‘mischiefs’ were which Alexander ‘wrought,’ and how he wrought them. It has been thought possible that he stood forward as St. Paul’s open accuser,! for the verb rendered ‘wrought,’ literally ‘indicated,

1 T took this view when writing the Poem below, line 189.

Alexander the Smith

bears sometimes the sense of indicting or accusing. 2 Tim. iv. But St. Paul never uses it so in the several other 14, 15: passages where it occurs in his writings. And in this passage, if I understand it, the suggestion is far rather that Alexander was a secret enemy, a wolf clothed in a fleece, a pretended disciple, who used his intimacy to play the traitor and entrap the saint to his doom. For we observe that St. Paul takes care here to warn Timothy against him; he is to be ‘on his guard against him’; words which would hardly be in place if the man were notoriously on the pagan side. I seem to see in him a feigned enquirer, perhaps a feigned convert, very likely in the pay of the persecutor; he seems to seek the Gospel, but he really hates it, and, once out of hearing, ‘withstands all too much’ the ‘discourses’ which Paul and Timothy held with their visitors or their congregations. He is either a pagan all the time, or more possibly one of those bitter Judaistic enemies of the Pauline Gospel whose malice may well have gone the length of giving the Apostle up to the emissaries of Nero, in some moment of seeming security and concealment, if thus they might be rid for ever of the detested doctrine.

Well might Timothy ‘be on his guard’ when next Alexander should present himself, under the disguise of friendship, or of spiritual curiosity, meaning ‘many a mischief’ all the while.

‘The Lord shall requite him according to his The works. The Authorized Version reads, ‘The rcv as eee Lord reward him, not, ‘shall reward him;’ making the Apostle to express the desire, the

2 Tim. iv. prayer, that retribution may overtake this enemy.

14, 15.

Prayers for
Retribution.

But the right reading, beyond reasonable question, demands the insertion of ‘shall,’ and leaves us with the Apostle’s mere affirmation that retribution will find Alexander out. And even this, we may be sure, would be said with the implication that the retribution should take place only if Alexander should prove impenitent; let him change his mind, let him renounce his merciless treacheries and seek pardon from the offended Christ, and he should find the promised welcome, full and free. St. Paul does but proclaim the unalterable law that the impenitent sinner, by the deepest necessities of spiritual life and order, must sooner or later be “rewarded according to his works.’

Would it be a real mercy to the impenitent sinner himself if it were otherwise? No, surely. The scourge of God is the very implement of His compassion if it awakes the sinning soul to its self-wrought misery before it is too late to escape a final doom.

Meanwhile do not let us hastily think that there is a moral discord in those solemn prayers and appeals for retribution which are scattered over Scripture. They are frequent in the Psalms, and here and there they occur in the tender-spirited Jeremiah’s pages. And they meet us also, though much more rarely, in the New Testament itself. Even in the mysterious visions of the Revelation the martyr-souls are heard (Rev. vi. 10) asking how long the vengeance on their murderers is to be delayed; a passage no doubt profoundly symbolical, but none

Alexander the Smith

the less sufficient to assure us that a sinless cry for 2 Tim. iv. retribution is a morally possible thing. 14, 15. It is possible for the sanctified human spirit so to see the awfulness of wrong-doing, and its antagonism to God, as to be impelled, without sin, even to cry out and pray for a just retribution; no angry clamour of a bitter personal rancour, but the voice of angered conscience. Yet is there ‘a more excellent way,’ more excellent at least for us when nothing is assailed but owrselves. ‘Father, forgive them;’ ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.’

16, 77.

A Wish of
Pardon and
Love.