Albert Barnes Commentary 1 Peter 5:8

"Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour," — 1 Peter 5:8 (ASV)

Be sober. While you cast your cares upon God and have no anxiety in that regard, let your concern be directed to another point. Do not doubt that He is able and willing to support and befriend you, but be watchful against your enemies. The word used here is fully explained in the notes on 1 Thessalonians 5:6.

Be vigilant. This word (grhgorew) is everywhere else in the New Testament translated watch. See Matthew 24:42-43; Matthew 25:13; Matthew 26:38, 40, 41.

It means that we should exercise careful circumspection, as one does when in danger. In reference to the matter discussed here, it means that we are to be on our guard against the schemes and the power of the evil one.

Your adversary the devil. Your enemy; he who is opposed to you. Satan opposes man in his best interests. He resists his efforts to do good, his purposes to return to God, and his attempts to secure his own salvation. There is no more appropriate description that can be given to him than to say that he resists all our efforts to obey God and to secure the salvation of our own souls.

As a roaring lion. (Compare Revelation 12:12.) Sometimes Satan is represented as transforming himself into an angel of light (see the notes on 2 Corinthians 11:14), and sometimes, as here, as a roaring lion, denoting the efforts he makes to alarm and overpower us.

The lion here is not the crouching lion—the lion stealthfully creeping towards his enemy—but it is the raging monarch of the woods, who by his terrible roar would intimidate all so that they might become an easy prey.

The particular thing referred to here, doubtless, is persecution, resembling in its terrors a roaring lion.

When error comes in, when deceptive practices abound, when the world allures and charms, the representation of the character of the enemy is not of the roaring lion, but of the silent influence of an enemy that has clothed himself in the disguise of an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. "Naturalists have observed that a lion roars when he is aroused by hunger, for then he is most fierce and most eagerly seeks his prey. See Judges 14:5; Psalms 22:13; Jeremiah 2:15; Ezekiel 22:25; Hosea 11:10; Zephaniah 3:3; Zechariah 11:3.

"—Benson.