1 Peter 4:3

1 Peter 4:3. For sufficient is the time past to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. Here the A. V. inserts two phrases, viz. ‘of our life' and ‘us,' which weight of evidence compels us to omit. According to the best authorities, too, the idea of' will' is not expressed, as the A. V. leads us to imagine, by the same word as in the previous phrase ‘God swill.' Here it might be rendered the ‘inclination' ‘intent,' or (with the R. V.) ‘desire' of the Gentiles. The verb ‘wrought' is of a form and a tense, which serve to throw the action entirely into the past as now finally done with. The adjective ‘sufficient' occurs only twice again in the New Testament, viz. in Matthew 6:34 (‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof'), and Matthew 10:25 (‘it is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master'). It is here the note of pained feeling uttering itself in irony. The sentence is an example of what grammarians call litotes, less than the reality being said in order to suggest the more. ‘ The past may suffice; there is a figure in that, meaning much more than the words express: It is enough, Oh! too much, to have so long, so miserable a life' (Leighton). The allusion to the ‘desire of the Gentiles ' (which is practically equivalent here to the desire of the heathen), especially as that desire or intent is interpreted by the following catalogue of sins, suits Christians who had been heathen, rather than Christians who had been Jews.

walking, or rather, as the perfect tense implies, walking as ye have done; in reference to a continuous course of life now done with. The A. V., following the readings which we have seen cause to reject, makes it ‘when we walked,' as if Peter courteously included himself in the description, in order to soften its edge.

in excesses; not, as both the A. V. and the R. V. render it, in lasciviousness. No doubt uncleanness is the foremost thing in view in these excesses (cp. Romans 13:13; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Galatians 5:19). But Peter begins with a wide, plural term, sufficient to include unbridled conduct of all kinds, and then goes on from the general to the particular.

lusts; pointing specially to fleshly lusts and appetites strictly so called, although the term is not confined to these (see on 1 Peter 1:14).

wine-swillings. The word is of rare occurrence even in the Classics. In the New Testament this is its solitary occurrence. The cognate verb, however, is used in the Greek Version of Deuteronomy 21:20, in the sense of being a drunkard. The noun denotes both the thirst for drink and indulgence in drink. Here it is in the plural, and means ‘debauches,' or, as the R. V. renders it, ‘wine-bibbings.'

revellings. Wycliffe strangely renders it, ‘immeasurable eatings;' Tyndale, ‘eating;' and Cranmer, ‘excess of eating.' The term occurs again only in Romans 13:13; Galatians 5:21. It is the word which is so familiar to us in the Classics as the name given to the drunken merry-makings of various kinds, which were so considerable an element in Greek life. They were recognised entertainments, celebrated on festal days, in connection with the worship of Bacchus and other gods, or in honour of the victors at the national games. Those of the last-named class were of a comparatively orderly kind. The others were attended with great licence, and generally ended in the revellers sallying out into the streets, and wakening the echoes with song and dance and noisy frolic.

carousings. Another word of which this is the only New Testament instance. It means social drinking-bouts or roysterings, rather than merely ‘banquetings,' as the A. V. makes it.

and lawless idolatries. Here, as so often elsewhere, idolatry and immorality are associated as going hand in hand with each other. The ‘abominable' of the A. V. and R. V. scarcely conveys the point of the adjective. It describes the idolatries as unlawful, outside the pale of Divine law. In the only other passage of the New Testament in which it occurs (Acts 10:28) it expresses the idea that fellowship between a Jew and a man of another nation was contrary to Jewish law. This mention of ‘idolatries' as the last and worst of the things after which the ‘desire of the Gentiles' ran, clearly indicates the Gentile extraction of Peter's readers. From the time of the captivity idolatry was the sin which the Jew specially forswore. It could not with any semblance of justice be spoken of as a characteristic Jewish vice in Peter's day. The passage in Romans 2:22, which is often cited in support of the opposite view, deals with an entirely different matter, the inconsistency on the part of one who professes to hate idolatry and yet commits sacrilege.