Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 3:6

"as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose children ye now are, if ye do well, and are not put in fear by any terror." — 1 Peter 3:6 (ASV)

Even as Sara.—A definite example of the general fact just asserted. St. Peter seems rather to have argued from what everyone would feel must have been the case than from explicit records. Sara’s usual subjection is clearly seen in the one instance to which St. Peter refers (Genesis 18:12), where Sara, though not addressing Abraham, but speaking to herself, calls him my lord. People show their usual habits of mind more freely when speaking to themselves.

Whose daughters ye are.—A very misleading version, following the Vulgate. What St. Peter says is, whose children you became, or were made. There was a definite period in their past lives at which they came to be—what they were not before—children of Sara.

Do we not have here, therefore, a distinct proof that these readers of the Epistle were Gentiles and not Jewesses? Not so. The phrase, which hoped in God, pointing as it does to the coming of the Messiah, prepares us to understand how these Hebrew women became Sara’s children. It was only by entering into her hope and attaching themselves to Jesus Christ, for whose coming she had looked. St. Peter has already been insisting on the nothingness of fleshly descent, the corruptible seed.

As has been pointed out concerning 1 Peter 1:24, this doctrine was not first taught by St. Paul, for St. Peter had heard it from the Baptist (Matthew 3:9) and from our Lord Himself (John 8:39). Whether persons were naturally Jews or Gentiles, they could not be children of Abraham without voluntarily becoming so by embracing his principles—i.e., by becoming Christians. The participial clauses that follow will need no change of translation, for they express not the act or process by which these ladies became children of Sara, but the condition on which they would remain her children. A very similar passage occurs in Hebrews 3:14: We have become partakers of the Christ, if (for the future) we hold... (Compare also 1 Thessalonians 3:8; Hebrews 3:6).

Do well.—See 1 Peter 2:12; 1 Peter 2:15; 1 Peter 2:20. The word means, of course, general good behavior, especially in all wifely duties. As this is a condition of remaining Sara’s children, it is implied that it was a characteristic of Sara.

Some critics would even put in parenthesis all the words from even as to ye are, and attach these participles (as they are in the Greek) to the last clause in 1 Peter 3:5, thus: “adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands (as Sara, for instance . . . whose daughters you were made), doing well, and not being afraid...” This is, however, somewhat cumbersome, and leaves the clause whose daughters you became a little too bald.

Are not afraid with any amazement.—Though this translation is grammatically possible, it does not make as good sense as translating it are not afraid of any alarm. It is, in fact, a quotation from or allusion to Proverbs 3:25, as Bengel points out, where Be not afraid of sudden fear is rendered in the Septuagint by these same peculiar words.

The “Wisdom” in that passage, which brings the calmness with it, is Christ, and it is Christ who must be understood in Proverbs 3:26: the Lord shall be thy confidence. To be afraid of sudden alarms and panics argues a lack of trust in God’s providence and power, and would, therefore, be unbecoming the daughters of Sara, who hoped in God. The alarms which they naturally might fear are, of course, quite general, but especially here, we may suppose, dread of what their unbelieving husbands might do to them (Compare 1 Peter 3:13 and following).