1 Peter 3:6

1 Peter 3:6. as Sarah obeyed Abraham. Why is Sarah introduced in this connection? Possibly as the standard by which the holy women of old measured their wifely submission. Taking ‘as' in the sense of ‘according as' (with Schott), we should have in this sentence a new stroke added to the preceding description; and the point would be, that not only did these holy women of olden time submit themselves to their own husbands, but they regulated the measure of their wifely obedience by no lower standard than the noble example of Sarah. Most interpreters (Huther, Alford, Bengel, Schott, etc.) retain for the ‘as' the sense of ‘as for instance,' and take Sarah to be introduced here simply as an eminent example of what characterized the holy women of the sacred history generally. It is plain, however, that she is named here not merely as one instance out of many, however brilliant an instance, but as the ancestress of the Israel of God. As Abraham is the father of all the faithful, so Sarah is the mother of all believing women, and the fact that their common mother made herself so obedient to her own husband is argument enough with her daughters in the kingdom of God new, as it was with her daughters in the kingdom of God then. The completeness and constancy of Sarah's obedience are implied whether we read the ‘obeyed' as an imperfect or as the historical past; for the authorities differ. The latter reading (see similar instances in John 17:4; Galatians 4:8) indeed gives even greater force to the idea of completeness designating the whole course of Sarah's wifely conduct by the quality which belonged to it as a finished whole.

calling him lord. The terms in which she spoke of Abraham in relation to herself are instanced as the natural expression of the spirit of meek subordination which animated her. One important historical occasion on which she recognised him as her lord (the same title is given by Hannah to Elkanah in the Septuagint Version of 1 Samuel 1:8) is recorded in Genesis 18:12. It has been observed that in the Old Testament Sarah is ‘the mother even more than the wife,' the picture of a motherly affliction, full of tenderness to her own child, and of a zealous regard for his interest, which made her cruel to others. It is not less true, however, that she is emphatically the wife, sinking her own independence in her husband. The only occasions on which she asserts that independence are the two expulsions of Hagar. In the New Testament she appears but seldom, once as an example of faith (Hebrews 11:11), twice where she is entirely secondary to Abraham (Romans 5:19; Romans 9:9), and here in the character which Tennyson depicts in his Isabel:

‘A courage to endure and to obey

A hate of gossip, parlance, and of sway,

Crowned Isabel, through all her placid life.

The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife.'

whose children ye became. The statement is not that these women are (as the R. V., the Vulgate, etc., render it) Sarah's children, far less that they shall be such, as some paraphrase it, but that they became or were made such. The phrase points not to a change from being Sarah's children after the flesh to being her children after the spirit, but rather to a change which made those who were in no sense descendants of Sarah children of hers in the truest sense. It applies quite naturally to Gentile readers, Gentile women now christianized being styled children of Sarah, just as Gentile believers generally are called children of Abraham (Galatians 3:7, etc.).

doing well. Does this qualify the ‘ye' in the previous ‘ye became,' and so express either a condition or an evidence of the spiritual kinship in which the women whom Peter addresses stood to Sarah? Or does it qualify the ‘holy women' of old, and so express certain characteristics of their wifely example? The difficulty of establishing a very clear connection between these participles and the past verb ‘ye became,' has induced some to prefer the former view, and to treat the first part of 1 Peter 3:6 as a parenthesis. Thus, according to Bengel (Westcott and Hort appear also to recognise it as possible), the construction would run ‘obeying their own husbands (as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose children ye became), doing good, and not fearing,' etc. The latter connection, however, approves itself as the more natural to the vast majority of interpreters. There remains, at the same time, much division of opinion as to the precise effect to which this participle and the following qualify the Christian women whom Peter has in view. Some take them to express the requirement on which their spiritual relation to Sarah is suspended. So the A. V. renders ‘as long as ye do well,' the R. V. ‘if ye do well,' and Beza, Alford, and many others agree with this. Others (Harless, Wiesinger, etc.) think they denote rather the sign of the spiritual kinship, as if = whose children ye became, as is proved by the fact that ye do well, etc. Others (Hofmann, etc.) regard them as expressing the way in which the kinship was established, as if = whose children ye became, and that just as (or, in such wise that) ye did good. There is the further question as to what is specially referred to in the clause. The ‘doing well' does not refer here to a life of beneficence, but either to the good act of turning to Christ, the act of conversion (for which very definite sense appeal is made to the use of the verb in 1 Peter 2:20), or, as is most probable, to the good doing exhibited in the loyal discharge of all wifely duty, the good which Milton thus commends:

‘Nothing lovelier can be found

In woman, than to study household good,

And good works in her husband to promote.'

Paradise Lost, lx. 232.

and not fearing any terror (or, scare). The noun used here for fear is one which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, although the cognate verb is found twice, with the sense of terrify according to our A. V. (Luke 21:9; Luke 24:37). It means any passionate emotion, any scare or nervous excitement, and may have either a subjective sense or an objective. The former is favoured by Luther, our own A. V., etc. The latter, however, is undoubtedly the sense here, as is shown both by the grammar of the clause and by the fact that Proverbs 3:25 (where the objective use is evident) appears to be in Peter's mind. So the older English Versions take it, e.g. Wycliffe gives ‘not dreading any perturbation;' Tyndale, ‘not afraid of every shadow;' Cranmer, ‘not afraid for any terror;' the Genevan, ‘not being afraid of any terror;' the Rhemish, ‘not fearing any perturbation.' The idea expressed by the clause, therefore, is not merely that they were to do all this willingly, and not out of fear (Hottinger, etc.); nor that in doing all this they were yet not to allow their submission to carry them the length of being afraid to act on the principle of obeying God rather than man, when driven to a choice between the two; but that they were to do good, specially in the realm of wifely duty, in spite of what they might have to fear from hostile surroundings and heathen husbands. In this superiority to the weakness of timidity, in this courageous adherence to all that is dutiful, even under distressing circumstances, they were also to show themselves true daughters of their great ancestress in the kingdom of faith.