1 Peter 5:7. Casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for you. While the A. V. adopts the one term ‘care' in both clauses, the original has two distinct terms, the former meaning ‘anxious care,' the latter ‘interest' or ‘concern.' The A. V. follows Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan. Wycliffe gives ‘cast ye all your business in to Him: for to Him is cure of you.' The Rhemish has ‘casting all your carefulness upon Him, because He hath care of you.' Peter seems to have Psalms 55:22 in mind, although he gives the second clause a different form from what it has in the Psalm. Compare also Psalms 37:5. The fact that God retains a loving concern for us is our reason for rolling the burden of our anxieties upon Him. This we do by prayer, and He shows His care for us by helping us to throw off the weight, or by sustaining us under it Humility of mind is a chief protection against anxiety. Where there is the disposition to humble ourselves beneath God's hand, there the disposition to trust Him will also appear. The anxiety is described here as a burden (= ‘your whole anxiety') which is to be cast as one whole upon God ‘not every anxiety as it arises; for none will arise, if this transference has been effectually made' (Alford). In the present instance the burden is not the affliction itself, but those doubtful, carking thoughts about affliction which double its pain. Compare Shakespeare's

‘Care is no cure, but rather a corrosive.

For things that are not to be remedied.'

Henry VI. iii. 3,

and the remarkable words of the Stoic slave, Epictetus (Dissert, 1 Peter 2:10), ‘From thyself, from thy thoughts, cast away grief, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, effeminacy, intemperance. But it is not possible to cast away these things in any other way than by fixing our eyes upon God only, by turning our affections on Him only, by being consecrated to His orders' (Ramage's rendering).

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Old Testament