1 Peter 1:24

1 Peter 1:24. For all flesh is as grass. Peter breaks off into the rapid, vivid terms in which the prophet of Isaiah 40 speaks of his commission. ‘The air is full of inspiration, of Divine calls and prophetic voices' (M. Arnold). The prophet hears a voice say to him, Cry; he asks what he shall cry, and the voice gives him as his cry this ‘antithesis between the decay it may be the premature decay (for the breath of Jehovah “bloweth” when “ it listeth") to which even the brightest and best of earthly things are liable, and the necessary permanence of Jehovah and His revelation' (Cheyne). The particular revelation or ‘word' there affirmed to stand infallibly for ever is God's promise regarding Israel. Here that is identified with the word now preached through the Gospel. The phrase ‘all flesh' (which in the Old Testament is characteristic of certain books only, occurring, e.g., repeatedly in the Pentateuch and the second half (never in the first) of Isaiah, four times in Jeremiah, three times in Ezekiel, once in Zechariah) embraces man and all that is of man as he is by nature.

and all its glory as flower of grass. The reading followed by the E. V., ‘the glory of man,' must yield to the better reading, ‘its glory.' If the ‘flesh,' therefore, is compared to grass (a familiar biblical figure of transient human life, cf. Psalms 90:5-6; Psalms 103:15-16; Job 8:12; Job 14:2; Isaiah 37:27; Isaiah 1:12; Jas. 7:10, 11), and one to which the rapidity of growth and decay in Eastern climates gives additional force, the ‘glory' of the flesh, by which is meant its goodliest outcome, ‘the most splendid manifestations of man's life,' is compared to the still more tender bloom that brightens on the flower only to fall oft ‘There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave; there are no voices, O Rhodopè, that are not soon mute, however tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last' (Landor).

withered was the grass, and the flower (the word ‘ thereof ' is not sustained by the best authorities) fell off. A lifelike picture of the actual occurrence, the tenses used being those of direct narration (aptly given by Wycliffe

dried up.... fell down), which may be rendered, as in the E. V., by our English present, as expressing what takes place habitually, but which rather represent the tiling as witnessed by the eye of the reporter.

But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. Having the Gospel immediately in view, Peter substitutes ‘the word of the Lord ' here for ‘the word of our God,' which is the phrase in Isaiah 40:8, in both the Hebrew text and the Greek. Other departures from the Old Testament passage, as we have it, also appear, some of which are of minor interest, others of a remarkable kind. Not only is the qualifying ‘as' introduced before the ‘grass,' the stronger term ‘glory' given for ‘goodliness,' the phrase ‘flower of grass' substituted for ‘flower of the field,' and ‘fadeth' displaced by ‘fell off,' but the important section of the Hebrew text which ascribes the decadence of grass and flower to the Spirit of the Lord blowing upon them (1 Peter 1:7) is entirely omitted. In these particulars, Peter follows the text of the ancient Greek translation. On the other hand, he departs from the Greek text, and returns to the Hebrew, in adopting ‘all its glory' instead of ‘all the glory of man. It appears, therefore, that Peter makes a very free quotation, or rather, that he does not bring in this passage as a formal quotation sustaining his statement by an appeal to Scripture, but simply expresses in Old Testament words which come easily to his lips a reason for the incorruptibility which he attributes to the new life, namely, that it is due to the action of a power which endures like God Himself. This is supported by the fact that the passage is introduced not by the ordinary conjunction ‘for,' but by a different term, used also in 1 Peter 1:16, meaning rather ‘because.'

And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you, or rather, and the word of the gospel which was preached unto you was this. The sentence is not parallel, as it is taken by many, to Romans 10:5-13, where the nearness or accessibility of the Word is in view. What is affirmed is not that this Word, of which things so glorious are said, is yet so near them as to be at their hand in the Gospel, but that the good tidings which were brought to these Asiatic Christians by Paul and his comrades were nothing else than that Word of the Lord of which the prophet spake, and nothing less enduring than the Voice of the desert had proclaimed that Word to be. So Peter identifies the revelation in the form of the ancient word of promise with the revelation in the form of the recent word of preaching; which he says, also, was not merely to them, or for their benefit, but unto them, addressed to them personally and borne in among them. He gives implicit witness at the same time to the fact that what he himself had now to teach them was nothing but the same grace which Paul and others had proclaimed. Hence the past tense, ‘ was preached,' as referring to their first acquaintance with the Gospel, when others than he who wrote to them had been the means of conveying to them the Lord's enduring Word, and thus creating in them a life capable of a stedfast and undecaying love. The term used for the ‘Word' in 1 Peter 1:23 (Logos) gives place now to a different term (rhema), which is supposed to express only the word as uttered (while the other denotes the word whether uttered or unuttered), and to give a more concrete view of it. How far the distinction can be carried out, however, is doubtful. And it is more than doubtful whether in the present instance the change is due to aught else than the fact that the Greek translation which Peter seems to follow uses the latter word in the passage cited.