1 Peter 3:2

1 Peter 3:2. having beheld your chaste behaviour coupled with fear. On the force of the ‘beheld,' as implying close observation, see on 1 Peter 2:12, where the same term occurs. The behaviour is styled chaste, not in the limited sense of the English adjective, but as covering purity, modesty, and whatever makes wifely conduct not only correct but winsome. It is further defined by a couple of words which mean literally ‘in fear,' but are happily paraphrased by our A. V., ‘coupled with fear,' after Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan. What is meant is not exactly ‘the fear of God,' but rather a sensitive respect for the husband and the married relation, the chastity or purity of behaviour is exhibited as associated necessarily with the dutiful spirit that recoils from everything inconsistent with the woman's and the wife's position. Nothing could better express what is meant by this ‘fear,' therefore, than Leighton's well-known description of it as ‘a delicate and timorous grace, afraid of the least air or shadow of anything that hath but a resemblance of wronging it, in courage, or speech, or apparel.'