1 Peter 3:1

Likewise, ye wives The sequence of thought is every way suggestive. The Apostle passes from the all but universal relation of the master and the slave as one element of social life, to the other, yet more universal, and involving from the Roman point of view almost as great a subordination, of husband and wife. Here also it was his object to impress on men and women, especially on the latter, the thought that the doctrine of Christ was no element of disorder. The stress which he lays on their duties may be fairly taken as indicating the prominence of women among the converts to the new faith. Of that prominence we have sufficient evidence in the narrative of the Acts (actsr 16:13, Acts 17:4; Acts 17:12). In what follows we have again a reproduction of the teaching of St Paul (Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18; 1 Timothy 2:9). It is not without interest to recall the fact that Aristotle makes the two relations of which St Peter speaks, that of husband and wife, that of master and slave, the germ-cells, as it were, out of which all political society has been developed (Arist. Pol. i. 2).

be in subjection to your own husbands The use of the Greek adjective for "own" is not intended, as some interpreters have thought, to emphasize a contrast between obedience rendered to their own husbands and that which they might be tempted to give to others, but rather to lay stress on the fact that their husbands, because they were such, had a right to expect the due measure of obedience in all things lawful. The words that follow indicate the frequency of the cases in which the wife only was a convert. The Greek text runs "that even if any obey not the word," as though, in some cases at least, it might be expected that husband and wife would both have been converted together. In "the word" we have the familiar collective expression for the whole doctrine of the Gospel. The Greek verb for "obey not" implies, as in chap. 1 Peter 2:7; Acts 14:2; Hebrews 3:18; Hebrews 11:31, a positive antagonism rather than the mere absence of belief and obedience.

may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives The Greek for "word" has no article, and the probable meaning is not "without the open preaching of the word of Christ," but rather, without speech, without a word [being uttered]. On "conversation," see note on chap. 1 Peter 1:15. Here, where "conversation" is used as the direct antithesis to speech, the contrast between the new and the old meanings of the word is seen with a singular vividness. The silent preaching of conduct is what the Apostle relied on as a more effective instrument of conversion than any argument or debate. In the verb "be won," literally, be gained over, we have the same word as that used by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:19-20, and by our Lord, in teaching which must have made a special impression on St Peter's mind, in Matthew 18:15.