1 Peter 1:12

Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us The better MSS. give "you" instead of "us," obviously with a better sense and in closer agreement with the "you" of the following clause. What is meant, still keeping to the line of interpretation here adopted, is that the prophets who had these previsions, at once of the coming sufferings and coming glories of the Church, had not carried on their ministering work for themselves, bounded, i.e., as by local and personal interests, but with a view to those even of the most distant members of the great family of God. The vision of the heavenly Jerusalem was for the dwellers in Pontus and Asia, in Rome or Corinth, as much as for those who lived within the walls of the earthly city.

which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel The Greek verbs are in the aorist, and therefore point to something in the past, but English idiom hardly allows us to combine present and past by saying "which now were reported." Here, it is believed, St Peter speaks of St Luke, St Paul, and the other labourers by whom the provinces of Asia Minor had been evangelised. They too, he recognises, were as fully inspired as the prophets of whom he had just spoken.

which things the angels desire to look into Better, angels, without the article. See note on 1 Peter 1:10. The word for "look" is the same as that used by St James (James 1:25), and implies, as in Luke 24:12; John 20:5; John 20:11, the earnest gaze of one who bends over a given object and scrutinizes it thoroughly. The words fit in, perhaps, with either of the two interpretations, but considering the part assigned to angels in the records of the Gospels, in connexion alike with the Nativity (Matthew 2:13; Matthew 2:19; Luke 1:11; Luke 1:26; Luke 2:9-15), the Passion (Luke 22:43), the Resurrection (Matthew 28:2; Mark 16:5; Luke 24:4; John 20:12) and the Ascension (Acts 1:10-11), it is more natural to refer them to sufferings and glories that were still future than to those of which they had already been spectators.