1 Peter 3:1

1 Peter 3:1. In like manner, ye wives, submit yourselves. Literally, it is ‘submitting yourselves,' this conjugal duty being represented as on the same plane with the former, and simply another application of the general law stated in 1 Peter 2:18.

to your own husbands. Here, as also in at least two other passages where the same charge is given, viz. Ephesians 5:22; Titus 2:5 (in Ephesians 5:24, and Colossians 3:18, the reading of the Received Text is insufficiently supported), the strong pronominal adjective which usually means ‘own' or ‘proper' is inserted before ‘husbands.' There is, however, no such contrast intended, as some interpreters (Steiger, etc.) imagine, between those to whom these women were united in marriage and others. The fact that in the decadence of the language the adjective lost much of its original force, makes it doubtful how much emphasis can be allowed it here. It may point, however, to the nature of the marriage relation, the legal claims, the peculiar and exclusive union which it involved, as furnishing a reason for submission (see Ellicott on Ephesians 5:22).

in order that even if any are disobedient to the word. By the word is meant, as at 1 Peter 2:8, the sum of Revelation, or the Gospel. The verb rendered ‘are disobedient' denotes, as at 1 Peter 2:7-8, the disposition that stands out positively against the truth. The case supposed is expressed as an exceptional and trying one.

they shall without word be gained by the behaviour of the wives. It would be natural to take the ‘word' to mean here exactly what it meant in the prior clause, namely, the Gospel. In that case, however, we should have to put upon the term ‘gained' the restricted sense (adopted by Schott) of won over to conjugal affection, to adherence to the wedded relation; whereas what Peter seems to have in view is the possibility of Christian wives winning over their heathen husbands to the Christian faith, and that under unfavourable circumstances. As it would be strange indeed (in view of Romans 10:14-17) to find an apostle contemplating the possibility of a conversion to Christ without the instrumentality of the Gospel, it is necessary to suppose that there is a kind of play upon the words here, the same term being used (by a figure of speech known to grammarians as antanaclasis) with different meanings. So Bengel briefly explains the term word as meaning ‘in the first instance the Gospel, in the second, talk.' The Syriac Version here renders it ‘without trouble.' Wycliffe rightly gives ‘without word.' Tyndale, Cranmer, the Genevan, and the Rhemish all have ‘without the word.' Notice, also, how the old English sense of ‘conversation' (as = conduct) appears in the A. V. here, and how the verb which our old English versions agree in translating ‘won' here is the one which is used by our Lord in Matthew 18:15 (‘thou hast gained thy brother ‘), and by Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:19-21 (‘that I might gain the more,' etc.). Leighton speaks of a soul thus gained to Jesus Christ as ‘added to His treasury, who thought not His own precious blood too dear to lay out for this gain. ‘The idea, therefore, is that, even in those most unpromising cases where the heathen husband steeled himself against the power of God's own Word, the Christian wife might haply win him over to Christianity by the silent persuasion of a blameless life, without word of hers. Where the preached Word failed, the voiceless eloquence of pure and consistent wifely behaviour might prevail, without labour of spoken argument or appeal. And the possibility of such victories of patience should encourage the wife to a wifely submission which might be hard to natural inclination. Compare Shakespeare's

‘The silence often of pure innocence

Persuades, when speaking fails.'

Winter's Tale, 1 Peter 2:2.