Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 1:24

"For, All flesh is as grass, And all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth:" — 1 Peter 1:24 (ASV)

For all flesh is as grass.—The citation is from Isaiah 40:6-8, and varies between the Hebrew and the LXX. in a way that shows the writer was familiar with both. But the passage is by no means quoted only to support the assertion, in itself ordinary enough, that the Word of the Lord abideth for ever. It is always impossible to grasp the meaning of an Old Testament quotation from a Hebrew speaker without considering the original context. Nothing is more common than to purposely omit the very words that contain the whole point of the quotation. Now these sentences in Isaiah stand at the forefront of the herald’s proclamation of God’s return to Zion, always interpreted as the establishment of the Messianic kingdom.

This proclamation of the Messianic kingdom includes words that St. Peter purposely omitted, and they contain the point of the quotation. The omitted words are: the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people—i.e., Israel—is grass. Immediately before our quotation were the words, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; statements that so shocked the LXX. translator that he entirely omitted 1 Peter 1:7, and changed the previous verse to make some difference between Jew and Gentile (as Godet points out on Luke 3:6), rendering it as the glory of the Lord shall be revealed (i.e., to Israel), and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Bishop Lowth’s comment on the original passage clearly illustrates what St. Peter means here: “What is the import of [the proclamation]? That the people, the flesh, is of a vain, temporary nature; that all its glory fadeth, and is soon gone; but that the Word of God endureth for ever. What is this but a plain opposition of the flesh to the Spirit; of the carnal Israel to the spiritual; of the temporary Mosaic economy to the eternal Christian dispensation?”

Here, then, St. Peter is quoting one of the greatest Messianic prophecies; and his Hebrew readers would at once understand the Hebrew method of quotation and see that he was calling attention to the absolute equality of Jew and Gentile proclaimed there. Generation of the corruptible seed, physical descent from Abraham, was “the glory of the flesh” (observe that according to the best text, St. Peter does not follow the LXX. by inserting “of man,” but follows the Hebrew and says, all the glory thereof—i.e., of the flesh). On this, “the Spirit of the Lord” had breathed (Psalms 104:30), and the merely fleshly glory had withered like grass.

But “the word of our God,” which, note well, St. Peter purposely changes into “the Word of the Lord,” i.e., of Jesus Christ, incidentally showing his Hebrew readers that he believed Jesus Christ to be “our God”—this abideth for ever. The engendering by this is imperishable, i.e., it involves a privilege that is not, like that of Jewish blood, transitory: it will never become a matter of indifference whether we have been engendered with this, as is now the case (Galatians 6:15) with regard to “corruptible seed”; no further revelation will ever elevate the unregenerate to be the equals of the regenerate. And in this regeneration, “all flesh” share alike. The teaching of the Baptist, who fulfilled this prophecy, is again apparent here .