An Inheritance That Exile Cannot Spoil

Peter uses the Greek form of the name Jesus gave him, “a stone”, not Simon. “Strangers” is parepidemoi, temporary residents, the word Abraham used of himself among the Hittites in the Greek of Genesis 23:4. The five regions, all in modern Turkey, may trace a courier’s circuit; Pontus and Bithynia, one Roman province, stand first and last.

At Sinai the people said “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient”, and then Moses sprinkled them with blood (Exodus 24:7–8): obedience, then sprinkling, in the order Peter uses. “Foreknowledge”, prognosis, occurs only twice in the New Testament, here and in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:23). “Peace be multiplied” is how Daniel’s kings open their letters (Daniel 4:1).

“Blessed be the God” is the Jewish berakah, the form of countless synagogue prayers, and it opens 2 Corinthians and Ephesians in the same words. “Begotten us again” is anagennao, found only here and in verse 23. “Lively” in 1611 meant living, as in the “lively stones” of 2:5.

The three adjectives all begin with the same negative prefix and nearly rhyme: aphthartos, amiantos, amarantos, unperishing, unstained, unfading. The amaranth flower was named for the belief that it never withered, and Peter returns to it in 5:4. Canaan, Israel’s inheritance, could be defiled (Jeremiah 2:7); this one cannot.

“Kept” is phroureo, to guard with a garrison, the word used of the governor of Damascus who “kept the city” to catch Paul (2 Corinthians 11:32). The inheritance is reserved in heaven and the heirs are under armed guard on earth. “The last time” is kairos, a season or appointed moment, not a date.

“Manifold” is poikilos, many-coloured, the same word Peter uses in 4:10 for the “manifold grace of God”: trials come in many colours, and so does grace. “For a season” is literally “for a little while now”. “If need be” implies the trials are not random: they come when they must.

Zechariah 13:9 speaks of refining a people “as silver is refined” and trying them “as gold is tried”, and Malachi 3:3 pictures God sitting as a refiner. “Trial” here is the tested genuineness left once the dross is gone. “Appearing” is apokalypsis, revelation, the unveiling of what is hidden now.

Peter, unlike his readers, had seen Jesus, and the sentence quietly draws that line, close to John 20:29: “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” “Unspeakable” is aneklaletos, found nowhere else in the Greek Bible. “Full of glory” is a participle, “glorified”: the joy is already touched by the glory to come.

“End” is telos, the goal a thing is aimed at. “Receiving” is komizomai, to carry off what is due, as a wage or a prize, the verb of 5:4, “ye shall receive a crown of glory”. “Souls” means the whole person and life, not a spirit set against the body.

The two verbs are compounds with the same intensifying prefix, exezetesan and exeraunesan, searched out and sifted out. Daniel is the model: he pored over Jeremiah’s seventy years (Daniel 9:2), and later admitted, “I heard, but I understood not” (12:8). The grace was “unto you”, not to the prophets themselves.

“What, or what manner of time” may also be read “what person, or what time”, the Greek tina able to mean either. The claim that the Spirit of Christ spoke in the prophets gives Christ a presence before his birth. “The glory” is plural in Greek, “the glories”, as though glory would come in stages.

“Look into” is parakypto, to bend and peer, the verb Luke uses of Peter himself stooping to look into the empty tomb (Luke 24:12). The cherubim on the ark were made with faces bent toward the mercy seat (Exodus 25:20). “Sent down from heaven” points to Pentecost, when Peter was the first preacher.

Israel ate the first passover “with your loins girded” (Exodus 12:11), ready to leave Egypt that night, and the exodus runs through the rest of the chapter: redemption, a lamb without blemish. “Be sober” is nepho, to be free of drink, a command Peter repeats in 4:7 and 5:8.

“Obedient children” is literally “children of obedience”, a Hebrew idiom like “sons of disobedience” in Ephesians 2:2. “Fashioning yourselves” is syschematizomai, the verb of Romans 12:2, “be not conformed to this world”, and it occurs nowhere else. Former “ignorance” suggests readers from pagan homes, since no Jew would say he had not known God.

The verb is “become”, genethete, not simply “be”: holiness is a change undergone, not a status assumed. “He which hath called you” names God by his act of calling, the same verb Peter will use in 2:9 and 5:10. “All manner of conversation” covers every kind of conduct, in the house and in the street.

The refrain “ye shall be holy; for I am holy” runs through Leviticus 11:44–45, 19:2 and 20:7. In 11:45 it goes on, “I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt”, the exodus again. Peter cites it for readers who were never under the food laws it first capped.

“Call on” is epikaleo, to invoke in prayer, as Psalm 89:26 has the king cry “Thou art my father”. “Without respect of persons” is one adverb found only here. “Sojourning” is paroikia, residence as a foreigner, the word Paul uses in Acts 13:17 for Israel’s stay “as strangers in the land of Egypt”.

“Redeemed” is lytroo, to free by paying a ransom. Isaiah 52:3 had promised, “ye shall be redeemed without money.” “Received by tradition from your fathers” is one word, patroparadotos, handed down by the fathers. Greeks and Romans revered ancestral custom; here it is called “vain”, the word for idols.

The passover lamb had to be “without blemish” (Exodus 12:5), and amomos is the Greek Old Testament’s usual word for a flawless victim. “Without spot”, aspilos, is Peter’s addition, not a word the laws of sacrifice use, doubling the point. “Precious” is timios, costly, answering the silver and gold of verse 18.

“Foreordained” is literally “foreknown”, proginosko, the verb of the “foreknowledge” in verse 2. The same knowing that chose the readers had first chosen Christ. “Manifest” is phaneroo, brought into the open, set in “these last times” against the time before the foundation of the world.

In his temple sermon Peter said “the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus” (Acts 3:13). The oldest manuscripts read “who through him are believers in God”. The last clause can also be read “so that your faith is also hope in God”, faith and hope pointing one way.

“Purified” is hagnizo, the word for purification before a festival, used of pilgrims going up to Jerusalem early to purify themselves (John 11:55). “Unfeigned” is anypokritos, without a mask. “Fervently” is ektenos, at full stretch, the word Luke uses when the church prayed for Peter in prison “without ceasing” (Acts 12:5).

“Seed” is spora, sowing, the seed as the origin of a life. Jesus’ explanation of the sower is short: “The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). The closing words “which liveth and abideth” can describe God or the word, and both readings are grammatically possible.

Peter quotes Isaiah 40:6–8 in its Greek form, which has “the glory of man” where the Hebrew says “the goodliness thereof”. Isaiah goes on, “because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it”; the Greek, and Peter, leave that line out, so the withering needs no cause beyond time.

Isaiah says “the word of our God”; Peter has “the word of the Lord”, which in this letter can point to Jesus. “Word” here is rhema, the spoken word, where verse 23 used logos. Peter then identifies Isaiah’s enduring word with the gospel the readers themselves heard preached.