2:4a

He will oppose and exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship: When the Wicked Person (“man of lawlessness”) comes, he will be against every existing religion, no matter what kind. He will also claim to be more important than any idols or other false gods that people worship. (He will also oppose the one, true God, the only one who deserves worship. See 2:4b.) His purpose will be to ensure that all worship should be directed toward him alone.

every so-called god or object of worship: This refers to any sort of idol or false god.

2:4b

So: The Greek word hōste (So), with which 2:4b begins, indicates that this part of the verse is the result of 2:4a.

in the temple of God: Commentators do not agree about what the temple of God refers to here, but it would be best to translate temple with the term you normally use for the temple in Jerusalem.

© 2002 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.