1 Peter 2:18

1 Peter 2:18. Servants, submit yourselves to your matters. The term for ‘servants' here is different from the one by which Paul so frequently expresses the idea of the bond-servant. It occurs only thrice again in the N. T., once in Paul's writings (Romans 14:4), and twice in Luke's (Gospel, Luke 16:13; Acts 10:7). It means, literally, ‘one belonging to one's house,' ‘a domestic,' and in Acts 10:7 it is translated by our A. V. ‘household servant.' In the best period of classical literature (e.g. Herod, viii. 106; Soph. Trach. 894), as also at least occasionally in the Apocrypha (Sir 4:30; Sir 6:11), it is applied not unfrequently to all the inmates of one's house, or to the ‘family' in the present sense. Hence some suppose that in the present passage it includes all domestics, bond and free. Others (Steiger, etc.) think it is selected in order to cover the class of freedmen who contributed largely to the earliest converts. But as the more usual sense of the word is that of ‘slave,' as it has that meaning in such passages of the LXX. and the Apocrypha as Exodus 21:27; Proverbs 17:2, Sir 10:25, and as that idea is certainly most germane to the context here, it is generally taken to denote bond-servants in the present passage. Peter selects it probably with a conciliatory purpose, as a more courteous term than the common one. It presents the slave in closer relation to the family, and so conveys a softened view of his position. The phrase ‘submit yourselves,' or ‘make yourselves subject,' is really in the participle form, ‘submitting yourselves,' and is connected, therefore, either with the ‘honour all men' of 1 Peter 2:17 (Alford, de Wette, etc.), with the general injunction of 1 Peter 2:11-12, or, most naturally, with the ‘submit yourselves' of 1 Peter 2:13. The slave's duty is thus given as an integral section of the great law of subjection to ‘every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake.' The word used for ‘masters' conveys the idea of absolute power. It is used in the present application elsewhere only in the Pastoral Epistles (see refs.). It repeatedly occurs as a Divine title, ‘Lord' (Luke 2:29; Acts 4:24; 2 Peter 2:1; Jude 1:4; Revelation 6:10).

in all fear. Statement of the spirit or temper in which the subjection is to be made good. Is the ‘fear' which is here intended fear towards God or towards man? On the ground that Peter afterwards (1 Peter 3:6; 1 Peter 3:14) warns against the fear of man, that Paul (Colossians 3:22) appends the definition ‘fearing the Lord' to similar counsels to servants, and that the term occurs at times without any explanatory addition in the sense of religious fear (1 Peter 1:17), some good interpreters (Weiss, Dr. John Brown, etc.) take the idea here to be = give this submission in a pious spirit, in reverential awe of God. But the next clause seems to define the fear here under the other aspect, as the feeling proper to the position of subjection, even under trying circumstances. It means, therefore, careful solicitude to give faithful service, ‘shrinking from transgressing the master's will' (Huther). This is confirmed by the use of the stronger phrase, ‘with fear and trembling,' in the Pauline parallel (Ephesians 6:5), which (as also in 1 Corinthians 2:3; 2 Corinthians 7:15, and even Philippians 2:15) appears to express the broad idea of watchful, nervous anxiety to do what is right.

not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. The ‘fear' has been put absolutely, ‘ all fear,' as extending to everything which can make demands upon the servant's loyalty and patience. The same is now required in reference to cases where it is subjected to the most painful strain. It is not to be affected by the harshness of the yoke, but is due equally to two very different types of master. The one type is described by two adjectives, which are represented fairly well by the ‘good and gentle' of the A. V. The second of these, however, means more than simply ‘gentle.' Adjective and noun are of somewhat limited occurrence in the N. T., and are variously rendered by our A. V., e.g. gentleness, gentle, here and in 2 Corinthians 10:1; Titus 3:2; James 3:17; clemency, Acts 24:4; moderation, Philippians 4:5; patient, 1 Timothy 3:3. It expresses the disposition which lets equity temper justice, is careful not to press rights of law to the extreme of moral wrongs, and shrinks from rigorously exacting under all circumstances its legal due. It might be rendered ‘considerate,' or ‘forbearing.' Wycliffe gives mild; Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan, courteous; the Rhemish, modest. The other type is described by an adjective, which means literally crooked, twisting (in which sense it is applied, e.g., to the river Maeander in Apoll. Rhod. 4, 1541), and then ethically what is not straightforward. Besides the present passage, it occurs only thrice in the N. T., in Luke 3:5; Philippians 2:15 (in which cases the A. V. gives crooked). and Acts 2:40 (where the A. V. has untoward). So here it means not exactly capricious (as Luther puts it) or wayward (the Rhemish), or even froward (as both the A. V. and the R. V. give it after Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan), but ‘harsh' or ‘perverse,' the disposition that lacks the reasonable and considerate, and makes a tortuous use of the lawful. In ecclesiastical Greek it is used to denote the Evil One.