1 Peter 3:10

1 Peter 3:10. For he that desires to love life and see good days. The kind of behaviour which has been urged in 1 Peter 3:8-9 is now further recommended by considerations drawn from the dependence of happiness on character, and from God's regardfulness of men's lives, as these are expressed in Psalms 34:13-17. Whether that psalm is taken to deal (e.g. with Delitzsch and its inscription) with the crisis when David saved his life among the Philistines by acting the part of a madman, and had to take refuge in the cave of Adullam, or (with Hitzig, Hupfeid, Olshausen, etc.) is referred to other times, it records the testimony borne to the true secret of a secure and gladsome life by one who had learnt that secret in the school of adversity. It describes what makes the good of life according to the Old Testament standard. In taking up its words, Peter follows the Greek Version (which is a literal rather than an adequate rendering of the Hebrew), but introduces certain changes which, while in themselves true to the spirit of the original, adapt it better to his immediate object and to the higher standard of the New Testament. The opening words, which in the original are in the form of a question, are given as a direct statement. Instead of ‘what man is he that desireth life and loveth many days,' according to our A. V., or, as the Greek Version renders it, ‘who is the man who desires life, loving good days,' Peter puts it thus: ‘he who desires to love life, and to see good days.' The transposition of the word ‘love,' along with the adoption of the ‘good' for the ‘many,' gives a new turn to the statement, the effect of which is to make the prominent thing not the number of the days or the length of life, but the kind of life. The phrase ‘love life' means more than ‘to be fain to have life,' or ‘to show love for life' (de Wette), or even ‘to be in earnest as to the love of life' (Wiesinger). It is to be taken in the simple sense of loving life for its good as opposed to hating it for its emptiness and vexations (Lillie), in the slightly modified sense of cherishing life, or in the secondary sense (which the verb has also in the Classics) of being pleased with life. So Bengel makes it=he who wishes so to live as not to be weary of life. Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan (not Wycliffe and the Rhemish, however) go astray here, rendering it, ‘if any man (or, he that doth) long after life and, loveth to see good days.' The term ‘see' has also the intensive force of experiencing or knowing personally what a thing is, which it often has in the Old Testament. e.g. Psalms 16:10; Psalms 27:13, etc.

let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile. Turning the second persons of the Hebrew and the Septuagint into third persons, Peter adopts the conditions on which the Psalmist suspends the boon of a life of such good and glad-ness. There is a climax in these conditions. They rise from the negative idea of making an end of all evil-speaking, to the stronger but still negative idea of turning away from evil-doing, thence to the positive idea of doing good, and finally to the sedulous pursuit of peace. The sins of speech are comprehensively indicated by the two distinct terms evil (which need not be limited to mere terms of reproach or the like) and guile; on which latter see 1 Peter 2:1; 1 Peter 2:22. ‘He first notices what vices are to be guarded against, to wit, that we are not to be abusive and insolent, then that we are not to be fraudulent and double. And then he goes on to deeds, (Calvin).' With this compare James on the bridling and taming of the tongue (James 1:36, James 3:1-12).