3:5 For they deliberately suppress this fact,17 that by the word of God18 heavens existed long ago and an earth19 was formed out of water and by means of water.
tn The Greek is difficult at this point. An alternative is “Even though they maintain this, it escapes them that …” Literally the idea seems to be: “For this escapes these [men] who wish [it to be so].”
18
tn The word order in Greek places “the word of God” at the end of the sentence. See discussion in the note on “these things” in v. 6.