1 Peter 3:7

1 Peter 3:7. Ye husbands, in like manner, dwell with your wives. The brief counsels to husbands which are now appended to the ample exposition of the duties of wives are neither a mere parenthesis in the Epistle (Canon Cook), nor simply a corollary to the foregoing exhortation (Canon Mason). Far less can they be said to be out of place, as not in harmony with the general idea of subjection (so Weiss). Both the formula ‘in like manner' and the participial turn of the sentence (literally = dwelling together) show that what is now said is given still as an integral portion of the general injunction of 1 Peter 2:13, and that it deals with another type of submission. There is a submission which husbands, notwithstanding that the man is the head of the woman, have to yield, not less than wives, to the idea and object of the married state as one form of the ‘every ordinance of man.' This implies on the side of the husbands that they are to dwell with their wives. Should a Christian husband be wedded to a heathen wife, he is not to consider himself freed on that account from the claims of family and conjugal life. Their association in the home life is to be according to knowledge. This does not mean according to their knowledge of the Gospel (Grotius, etc.); neither is it exactly = according to the Christian recognition of the wife's relation to the husband (Scott, etc.). It means reasonably, intelligently, i.e with a just recognition and wise consideration of what the ordinance itself is, and what the relative positions of husband and wife are. ‘One cannot now prescribe rules,' says Luther; ‘God brings it home to every man himself that he must act toward his wife agreeably to reason, according as may be best adapted to each wife' (see also Steiger). So the poet Thomson describes the husband, ‘Who, with superior dignity, with reason, And manly tenderness, will ever love her; Not first a kneeling slave, and then a tyrant.'

giving honour to the woman as the weaker vessel, as also heirs together of the grace of life. ‘The whole of chivalry is in these words,' s ays Canon Mason. The construction of the passage, however, is somewhat uncertain. The word rendered ‘the woman' is properly speaking an adjective, ‘the female' qualifying the noun ‘vessel.' The ‘dwell with' may have its object either in the term ‘your wives,' which then must be supplied from the context, or it may be connected immediately with the noun ‘vessel.' The phrase ‘giving honour' also may go either with the ‘woman,' etc., or with the ‘heirs together.' Hence the whole sentence may be rendered as above, which is the construction adopted (with some minor differences) by the A. V., the R. V., the old English Versions, etc. Or it may run thus ‘dwell according to knowledge with the female vessel as the weaker vessel, giving honour to them as heirs together,' etc. In either case it is shown that if the home life is to be regulated so as to be ‘according to knowledge,' there must be a considerate recognition of the natural weakness of the woman, and a readiness to give her (the verb means to apportion or assign; this is its only occurrence in the New Testament) the honourable regard which is due to her as the husband's associate in life and in grace. The term vessel is used here in the figurative sense, in which it is elsewhere applied to men as objects made by God, and used as the instruments of His purpose (cf. Acts 9:15; Romans 9:21-23; 2 Timothy 2:21; cf. also 2 Corinthians 4:7). This usage has its basis in the language of the Old Testament prophets, e.g. Jeremiah 18:6; Jeremiah 19:11; Jeremiah 22:28; Jeremiah 48:36; Isaiah 29:16; Isaiah 45:9; Isaiah 64:8; Hosea 8:8; Psalms 2:9; cf. Revelation 2:27. It is used in the solemn sense of vessels of God's wrath or mercy, and vessels chosen for His service; but also, as here and in 1 Thessalonians 4:4 (in which last it seems to designate the wife), in reference to the Divine intention in the natural relations. Husband and wife, too, are both regarded here as equally the vessels or instruments by which God's purpose is made good in this particular province of life, the only difference between them being that the one is the weaker vessel, and the other the stronger. This natural difference establishes the wife's claim on the considerate regard of the husband. The same claim upon his respect and honour is made yet stronger by the fact that all natural differences disappear in the spiritual relation which makes them joint-heirs (cf. Romans 8:17; Ephesians 3:6; Hebrews 11:9) of the grace of life. The exact force of this latter statement will vary slightly according to the choice which is made between two somewhat equally balanced readings, one of which puts the ‘heirs together' in apposition to the ‘husbands,' the other in apposition to the wives. In the former case, the point is that the husband's consciousness of being on the same platform with the wife in the inheritance of grace should enlist his honour and regard for her; in the other, it will be that honour is due to the wife not only because she is the wife, and naturally weaker than the husband, but also because she has all the dignity of having in point of fact an equal interest in grace. What they inherit together is called ‘the grace of life; by which is to be understood neither the ‘gift or dower of natural life' which is committed to husband and wife (Canon Mason), nor the life of Divine favour and blessing which the married estate is designed to be (Hofmann). As the immediate mention of prayer suggests, it means rather the grace which consists in eternal life, or which brings that life to us; or, as Alford and others take it, ‘the gracious gift of eternal life' that new life as a whole, of which the woman is participant equally with the man. It is not necessary to suppose that only Christian wives are in view. The clause deals simply with the fact that God makes no distinction between husband and wife in regard to this gift of a life which is at once a glorious present possession and an object of elevating anticipation. The idea is not merely that ‘the hope of eternal glory makes men generous and mild,' as Bengel interprets it, but that the recognition of another as having the same place as ourselves in God's offer of grace, above all if that other has the sacred name of wife, should teach us to yield the honour which has been enjoined.

to the end that your prayers be not hindered. The reading varies here between two forms of the verb, one which means to be cut off, i.e in the sense of being destroyed, or in that of being debarred from communication with the throne of grace; and another (and this is the better attested) which means to be impeded or obstructed. The prayers are taken by many interpreters (Calvin, Alford, Weiss, etc.) to be the conjugal prayers of husband and wife, social prayers, or family prayers; in which case the idea is that, where the wife is not recognised by the husband for what she is in God's sight, the two cannot pray in concert as married people. There will be nothing to call forth their common prayers, and the blessing attached (Matthew 18:19) to united supplication cannot visit their home. As the husbands, however, are directly dealt with in the verse, it is better to take the prayers to be their prayers; and the idea will be that the Christian husband's own prayers will be arrested on their way to the throne. The injustice done to the wife will burden their pinions, and check their rise to the Divine Ear. The possibility of so disastrous a result is another reason for giving honour to the wife.