Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 2:23

"who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered threatened not; but committed [himself] to him that judgeth righteously:" — 1 Peter 2:23 (ASV)

Who, when He was reviled.—This “who” might be translated as and yet He. Conscious though He was of being blameless (John 8:46), it did not make Him retaliate against His accusers with counter-accusations, true though these might have been. The word here translated “revile” is the same that reappears in 1 Peter 3:9 as “railing,” and a sample of what it means is given in John 9:28. Servants would be particularly liable to be abused in this way, and instances are not lacking in the comic poets where they lose their self-control under it and openly berate their owners in return.

The “suffering,” on the other hand, implies actual bodily maltreatment, “buffeting” (1 Peter 2:20) and the like, which slaves could not answer directly by striking back, but would sometimes take their revenge by “threats” of what they would do—run away, burn the house, poison the food, or commit small acts of spite. Instances of our Lord’s silence or meekness under “reviling” can be seen in John 7:20, John 8:40, and Matthew 12:24, as well as in the accounts of the Passion.

There are no recorded instances, until the last day of His life, of His “suffering” in the sense intended here. However, the tense of the verbs “reviled,” “threatened,” and “committed” shows that the writer was not thinking exclusively of any one occasion, but of our Lord’s constant habit. Naturally, what would be uppermost in St. Peter’s mind were the hours he spent warming himself at Caiaphas’ fire, with the denial on his lips, as he saw the Messiah blindfolded and buffeted. He is also thinking of Isaiah 53:7.

But committed Himself.—This was His only form of revenge. Since the Greek does not express the grammatical object of the verb, it is better not to supply one as definite as “Himself” or “His cause”; rather, it implies something like, “but would leave it to Him who judges righteously.”

M. Renan (in Antéchrist, p. 117) says that this passage “requires it to be understood that the incident of Jesus praying for His murderers was not known by Peter,” and other critics have held the same view.

But:

1. St. Peter, as we have said, is speaking of what was the constant habit of Jesus, not of what He did on the day of His crucifixion only.
2. The word does not necessarily imply any act or word of direct appeal to God to judge between His murderers and Him; on the contrary, the leading thought is that of “passing the matter over” to God , by simply refusing to take any action in self-defense.
3. It would have been unlike the usual method of the Epistles to make direct reference to any of the minor details of our Lord’s history.
4. Such a reference here would be beside the point, for St. Peter said nothing in 1 Peter 2:19 about praying for bad masters, and here he is only justifying by Christ’s example the position he had laid down there.

To Him who judges righteously.—God is described in the aspect that is most reassuring to people who are suffering unjustly (2 Thessalonians 1:5). This looks back to that “consciousness of God” spoken of in 1 Peter 2:19.

There is a curious variant reading that is adopted by the Vulgate, though without any solid authority and evidently a mere blunder, the interpretation of which we may leave to those who are committed to it: “He gave Himself over to him (or, to one) who judges unrighteously.” St. Cyprian seems to have understood it as referring to our Lord’s voluntary self-surrender to Pilate.