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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 1 Peter 1:18 - 1:18
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Knowing (eidotes). Second perfect active participle of oida, causal participle. The appeal is to an elementary Christian belief (Hort), the holiness and justice of God with the added thought of the high cost of redemption (Bigg).
Ye were redeemed (elutrōthēte). First aorist passive indicative of lutroō, old verb from lutron (ransom for life as of a slave, Mat 20:28), to set free by payment of ransom, abundant examples in the papyri, in N.T. only here, Luk 24:21; Tit 2:14. The ransom is the blood of Christ. Peter here amplifies the language in Isa 52:3.
Not with corruptible things (ou phthartois). Instrumental case neuter plural of the late verbal adjective from phtheirō to destroy or to corrupt, and so perishable, in N.T. here, 1Pe 1:23; 1Co 9:25; 1Co 15:53.; Rom 1:23. Arguriōi ē chrusiōi (silver or gold) are in explanatory apposition with phthartois and so in the same case. Slaves were set free by silver and gold.
From your vain manner of life (ek tēs mataias humōn anastrophēs). “Out of” (ek), and so away from, the pre-Christian anastrophē of 1Pe 1:15, which was “vain” (mataias. Cf. Eph 4:17-24).
Handed down from your fathers (patroparadotou). This adjective, though predicate in position, is really attributive in idea, like cheiropoiētou in Eph 2:11 (Robertson, Grammar, p. 777), like the French idiom. This double compound verbal adjective (pater, para, didōmi), though here alone in N.T., occurs in Diodorus, Dion. Halic, and in several inscriptions (Moulton and Milligan’s Vocabulary; Deissmann, Bible Studies, pp. 266f.). The Jews made a wrong use of tradition (Mat 15:2.), but the reference here seems mainly to Gentiles (1Pe 2:12).