Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 3:1

"In like manner, ye wives, [be] in subjection to your won husbands; that, even if any obey not the word, they may without the word be gained by the behavior of their wives;" — 1 Peter 3:1 (ASV)

Likewise you wives . . .—This is the third division of the second prudential rule: conjugal subordination. Here, again, the form in the original is participial, joining this injunction to 1 Peter 2:13 and 1 Peter 2:18, where the word is the same in Greek: “wives, in the same way submitting yourselves.”

Whether this imposes for all time upon Christian wives as complete a submission towards their husbands as is here enjoined might perhaps be questioned, because the special reason for the command in this place was to allay suspicions engendered by the boldness with which Christianity proclaimed the freedom of the individual. St. Peter has just been giving injunctions for absolute submission, even to injustice, on the part of slaves; and the progress of Christianity has abolished slavery altogether. The measure of the Christian wife’s submission may safely be left to her own enlightened conscience, guided by other passages of the New Testament not written, like this one, for a special emergency.

Your own husbands.—This does not order submission to the husband in contrast to submission to other directors, but rather gives a reason for obedience. “The Christian wife that has love for God,” says Leighton, “though her husband is not so comely, or so wise, or in any way so amiable, as many others, yet because he is her own husband, and because of the Lord’s command in general, and His providence in the particular assignment of her own, therefore she loves and obeys.”

That if any do not obey the word.—Rather, in order that even supposing some (at present) disobey the word. “The word” is, of course, the Gospel, the declaration of the fulfilment of the prophecies in Jesus. And those who “disobey the word” are, according to constant usage, the Jews. The present verb is used of the Jews in Acts 14:2; Acts 17:5; Acts 19:9; Romans 10:21; Romans 11:31; and Romans 15:31, besides St. Peter’s own use in 1 Peter 2:8 and 1 Peter 4:17.

The only places where it is distinctly used of others are Romans 2:8 (of Jew and Gentile together), Romans 11:30 (where the Gentiles are compared with the Jews), Hebrews 3:18 (of the Israelites in the wilderness), Hebrews 11:31 (of the men of Jericho), and 1 Peter 3:20 (of the refractory antediluvians). In any case it must mean a wilful refusal to submit to the Word, in spite of being intellectually convinced. (See especially 1 Peter 2:8.) For every reason, therefore, it is more probable that the case here supposed is that of Hebrew (Christian) women, married to men of their own race who reject the gospel.

They also may . . .—The order here is not as neat as in the original, and it spoils the point to insert the definite article before “word.” It should run: In order that . . . through their wives’ conversation, without a word, they may (literally, shall) be gained. There is something almost playful in the substitution of “their wives” instead of “you,” and in the “without a word” contrasted with “the word” before.

St. Peter seems to enjoy laying the little innocent plot. He was himself, as the Prayer Book reminds us, a married man. And what he means here is not that those who have resisted the public preaching in the synagogues should, even without that public preaching, be won; rather, that though the gospel as uttered verbally only provokes them to opposition, the gospel as submissively acted by their wives, without a word said on the matter, ought to convert them.

“This model of submission and humility,” says M. Renan, meaning the Lamb of God, “is made by Peter the law for all classes of Christian society. The wife above all, without setting up for a preacher (sans faire la précheuse), ought, by the discreet charm of her piety, to be the great missionary of the faith.”

The word rendered “won” keeps up the playfulness of what goes before; it means “to turn a profit,” and there is just enough of ruse in it to make the enforcement of submission to a husband of opposed religious views seem an enticing little speculation. The tense of the original verb indicates that the scheme is certain to succeed. (Compare to Matthew 18:15 and 1 Corinthians 9:19–20.) Archbishop Leighton points out that in Hebrew the name of the book of “Ecclesiastes; or, the Preacher,” is a feminine, and the same is the case in Psalms 68:11, and elsewhere.