1 Peter 3:18

The advantage of suffering for well-doing is exemplified in the experience of Christ, who gained thereby quickening (1 Peter 3:21) and glory (1 Peter 3:22). How far the pattern applies to the Christian is not clear. Christ suffered once for all according to Hebrews 9:24-28; the Christian suffers for a little (1 Peter 3:10). But does the Christian suffer also for sins ? St. Paul and Ignatius speak of themselves as περίψημα περικαθάρματα; compare the value of righteous men for Sodom. But even if Peter contemplated this parallel it is quite subordinate to the main idea, in which (spirit) even to the spirits in prison he went and preached them that disobeyed once upon a time when the patience of God was waiting in the days of Noah while the ark was being fitted out.… The spirits who disobeyed in the days of Noah are the sons of God described in Genesis 6:1-4. But there as in the case of Sarah St. Peter depends on the current tradition in which the original myth has been modified and amplified. This dependence supplies an adequate explanation of the difficulties which have been found here and in 1 Peter 3:21, provided that the plain statement of the preaching in Hades is not prejudged to be impossible. The important points in the tradition as given in the Book of Enoch (vi. xvi. cf. Jubilees v.) are as follows: the angels who lusted after the daughters of men descended in the days of Jared as his name (Descent) shows. The children of this unlawful union were the Nephilim and the Eliud. They also taught men all evil arts so that they perished appealing to God for justice. At last Enoch was sent to pronounce the sentence of condemnation upon these watchers, who in terror besought him to present a petition to God on their behalf. God refused to grant them peace. They were spirits eternal and immortal wi.o transgressed the line of demarcation between men and angels and disobeyed the law that spiritual beings do not marry and beget children like men. Accordingly they are bound and their children slay one another leaving their disembodied spirits to propagate sin in the world even alter it has been purged by the Flood. But Christians believed that Christ came to seek and to save the lost and the captives; all things are to be subjected to Him. So Peter supplements the tradition which he accepts. For him it was not merely important as connected with the only existing type of the Last Judgment or an alternative explanation of the origin and continuance of sin but also as the greatest proof of the complete victory of Christ over the most obstinate and worst of sinners. ἐν ᾧ sc. πνεύματι : as a bodiless spirit in the period between the Passion (18) and the Resurrection-Ascension (22). καί, even to the typical rebels who had sinned past lorgiveness according to pre-Christian notions. τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν, the spirits in prison, i.e., the angels of Gen. l.c. who were identified with my spirit of Genesis 6:3, and therefore described as having been sent to the earth by God in one form of the legend (Jubilees, l.c.). The name contains also the point of their offending (Enoch summarised above); cf. 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 1:6; and the prophecy of Isaiah 51:1 (which Jesus claimed, Luke 4:8 f.), κηρῦξαι αἰχμαλώτοις ἄφεσιν. These spirits were in ward when Christ preached to them in accordance with God s sentence, bind them in the depths of the earth (Jub. 1 Peter 5:6). ἐκήρυξεν = εὐηγγελίσατο, cf. Luke 4:8. Before Christ came, they had not heard the Gospel of God's Reign. Enoch's mediation failed. But at Christ's preaching they repented like the men of Nineveh; for it is said that angels subjected themselves to Him (1 Peter 3:22, cf. ὑποτάσσεσθαι, throughout the Epistle. ἀπειθήσασίν ποτε, their historic disobedience or rebellion is latent in the narrative of Genesis 6. and expounded by Enoch; cf. 1 Peter 2:7)., 1Pe 3:1, 1 Peter 4:17. In LXX ἀπ commonly = rebel (מרה). ἀπεξεδέχετο … μακροθυμία, God's long-suffering was waiting. The reading ἅπαξ ἐξεδέχετο is attractive, as supplying a reference to the present period of waiting which precedes the second and final Judgment (Romans 2:4; Romans 9:22) The tradition lengthens the period of πάρεσις (Romans 3:25); but St. Peter limits it by adding while the Ark was being fitted out in accordance with Gen. If Adam's transgression be taken as the origin of sin the long-suffering is still greater. The idea seems to be due to ἐνεθυμήθην, I reflected, of the LXX, which stands for the unworthy anthropomorphism of the Hebrew I repented in Genesis 6:6. Compare for language James 5:7; Matthew 24:37 f.; Luke 17:26 f. εἰς ἣν, sc. entered and. ὀλίγοι κ. τ. λ. St. Peter hints that here in the typical narrative is the basis of the disciple's question, εἰ ὀλίγοι οἱ σωζόμενοι (Luke 13:23). ὀκτὼ ψυχαί so Genesis 7:7; ψ. = persons (of both sexes), cf. Acts 2:41, etc. The usage occurs in Greek of all periods; so נפש in Hebrew and soul in English. διεσώθησαν διʼ ὕδατος, were brought safe through water. Both local and instrumental meanings of διʼ are contemplated. The former is an obvious summary of the whole narrative; cf. also διὰ τὸ ὕδωρ (Genesis 7:7). The latter is implied in the statement that the water increased and lifted up the ark (Genesis 7:17 f.); though it fits better the antitype. So Josephus (Ant. I., iii. 2) says that “the ark was strong so that from no side was it worsted by the violence of the water and Noah with his household διασῴζεται ”. Peter lays stress on the water (rather than the ark as e.g., Hebrews 11) for the sake of the parallel with Baptism (Romans 6:3; cf. St. Paul's application of the Passage of the Red Sea, 1 Corinthians 10:1 f.).