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1Pe_3:20. The words which begin this verse: ἀπειθήσασίν ποτε , characterize the spirits who are in prison according to their former conduct. The participle must not, with Wiesinger, be resolved into: “although, notwithstanding the fact that they had been disobedient;” an adversative relation of this kind must have been more plainly expressed.[214]
According to the uniform usage of the N. T., the word ἀπειθεῖν has here also the meaning of unbelief involving resistance; cf. chap. 1Pe_2:7-8, 1Pe_3:1, 1Pe_4:17. The translation: “to be disobedient,” is too inexact, for the word forms the antithesis to πιστεύειν .
ὅτε ἀπεξεδέχετο κ . τ . λ .] serves not only to specify the time when these spirits were unbelieving, but also to mark the guilt of the ἀπειθεῖν .
ἀπεκδέχεσθαι , according to N. T. usage, equivalent to: “patient waiting,” is here used absolutely, as in Rom_8:25 (comp. ἐκδέχεσθαι , Heb_10:13; thus Schott also). The narrative itself shows the object to which this waiting of God’s long-suffering was directed. Its duration is not to be limited to the seven days mentioned in Gen_7:4 (de Wette), for this is in keeping neither with the ἀπεξεδέχετο ἡ … μακροθυμία , nor the subsequent κατασκευαζομένης κιβωτοῦ , but embraces the whole period of 120 years mentioned in Gen_6:3.
The time specified by ὅτε κ . τ . λ . is still more precisely defined in the subsequent ἐν ἡμέραις Νῶε and the κατασκευαζομένης κιβωτοῦ ; in such a way, however, that these adjuncts contain a reference to the exhortation to repentance then given, for Noah was not like the others, an unbeliever, but a believer, and the preparation of the ark gave unmistakeable testimony to the approaching judgment.—“ κιβωτός without the article, the expression used by the LXX. for úÌÅáÈä , equal to ark, arca; comp. Mat_24:38; Luk_17:27; Heb_11:7” (Wiesinger).
[214] Hofmann has now justly given up his former explanation: “without being obedient.” Walther’s interpretation is evidently entirely arbitrary: “to the spirits, i.e. the devils and the damned in general, particularly to those damned who,” etc. But neither is there a warrant for inserting οἶον (Bengel: subaudi οἶον , i. e. exempli gratia, in diebus Noe; subjicitur generi species maxime insignis).
REMARK 1.
Some of the interpreters who do not apply this passage to the descensus ad inferos, as Luther (in his Auslegung der Ep. Petri, 1523), the Socinians, Vorstius, Amelius, Grotius, etc., explain ἐκήρυξε as referring to the preaching of the apostles, assuming that the unbelievers in the time of Noah are mentioned only as types of the unbelievers in apostolic times. τὰ ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύματα they understand to mean the heathen alone, or those along with the Jews. Amelius: πνεύμ . hic in genere denotant homines, quemadmodum paulo post ψυχαί · ἐν φυλακῇ : in captivitate erant tum Judaei, sub jugo legis existentes, tum quoque gentiles, sub potestate diaboli jacentes. Illos omnes Christus liberavit; praedicationem verbi sui ad ipsos mittens et continuans et Apostolos divina virtute instruens.
REMARK 2.
Even interpreters who apply this passage to the descensus ad inferos, and understand ἐκήρυξε of the preaching of salvation,[215] are guilty of much arbitrariness, and especially in designating more precisely those to whom the preaching is addressed. Several of the Fathers, as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus; many of the Scholastics; further, Zwingli, Calvin (in his Comment.), and others,—hold those to have been the pious, especially the pious of the O. T.[216]
Marcion thinks the ΚΉΡΥΓΜΑ was addressed to those who, though in the O. T. termed ungodly, were actually better than the O. T. believers.
Clemens Al. supposes the ΔΊΚΑΙΟΙ ΚΑΤᾺ ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΊΑΝ , who, however, were still without faith and in the trammels of idolatry.
Several commentators assume that not all unbelievers in the days of Noah are meant, but those only who, at first indeed unbelieving, had still repented at the last moment when the flood came upon them; this is the view of Suarez, Estius, Bellarmin, Luther (zu der Erklärung der Genesis, 1536, und zu Hosea IV. 2, v. J. 1545),[217] Peter Martyr, etc. Bengel says: Probabile est, nonnullos ex tanta multitudine, veniente pluvia, resipuisse: cumque non credidissent, dum expectaret Deus, postea, cum … poena ingrueret, credere coepisse, quibus postea Christus eorumque similibus se praeconem gratiae praestiterit. Wiesinger agrees with this interpretation, at least in so far that he assumes that the moral condition of the individual (at the time of the flood) was not in every case the same, but extremely varied; although, on the other hand, he finds fault with it on the ground “that, in contradiction to the context, it limits the ἘΚΉΡΥΞΕ only to a part.” Schott remarks, as against Wiesinger, “that although some may in respect of moral condition have differed from the majority, or still have repented in the last moment, yet these were not among the spirits in durance who listened to Christ’s preaching.”
[215] It must further be remarked that several commentators: Athanasius, Ambrosius, Erasmus, Calvin (in his Inslit. lib. II. 2, c. 16, § 9), understand Christ’s preaching as at once a praedicatio salvifica and praed. damnatoria. Calvin, however, does hold by the idea of κηρύσσειν , when he says: Contextus vim mortis (Christi) inde amplificat, quod ad mortuos usque penetraverit, dum piae animae ejus visitationis, quam sollicite exspectaverant, praesenti aspectu sunt potitae; contra reprobis clarius patuit, se excludi ab omni salute.
[216] Calvin’s exposition is singular: he interprets φυλακή equal to specula vel ipse excubandi actus; τὸ ἐν φυλ . πν . equals: the spirits of those who were on the watch-tower, i.e. in the expectation of salvation, or also in anxietas expectationis Christi, and then continues: Postquam (Ap.) dixit, Christi se mortuis manifestasse, mox addit: quum increduli fuissent olim, quo significat nihil nocuisse Sanctis Patribus quod impiorum multitudine paene obruti fuerunt. Exemplum vero ex tota vetustate prae aliis illustre deligit, nempe cum diluvio submersus fuit mundus. He removes the scruple, that the dative ἀπειθήσασι is not in harmony with this explanation, by observing that the apostles sometimes employ one case in room of another.
[217] On Luther’s vacillation in interpreting this passage, see Köhler as above, and Schweizer as above, p. 7.
REMARK 3.
The view commonly accepted is that this preaching by Christ took place before His resurrection, whilst His body lay in the grave. Many even of the older dogmatists of the Lutheran Church, however, hold it to have been accomplished after His quickening, that is, in the time between this and His going forth from the grave. Quenstedt says: Christus θεάνθρωπος totaque adeo persona (non igitur secundum animam tantum nec secundum corpus tantum) post redunitionem animae ac corporis ad istud damnatorum που descendit; he fixes the time when this happened: illud momentum, quod intercessit inter ζωοποίησιν et ἀνάστασιν Christi stricte ita dictam. Hollaz: distinguendum inter resurrectionem externam et internam; illa est egressio e sepulcro et exterior coram hominibus manifestatio; haec est ipsa vivificatio; so, too, Hutter, Baier, Buddeus, etc. In like manner Schott: “in the new spiritual life which in that mysterious hour of midnight He had put on, and before appearing with it on the upper world by His resurrection, He descended.”
The verse does not indeed say that the ἐκήρυξε belongs to this very moment, but it does certainly point to the preaching having taken place after Christ’s restoration to life, as de Wette, Brückner, Wiesinger, Zezschwitz, have rightly acknowledged; for referring as ἐν ᾧ does to the πνεύματι connected with ζωοπωηθείς , it is arbitrary to find in πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξε mention made of an act of Christ which took place after the θανατωθείς indeed, but yet before the ζωοποιηθείς . As, then, both expressions apply to Christ in His entire person, consisting of body and soul, what follows must not be conceived as an activity which He exercised in His spirit only and whilst separated from His body. In addition to this, if according to His intention His preaching was to be indeed a preaching of salvation, it must have had for its substance the work of redemption, completed only in the resurrection. Weiss (p. 232) objects that πνεῦμα is not equal to σῶμα πνευματικόν , and this is undoubtedly true; but it cannot prove anything against the view that Christ as the Risen One, that is, in His glorified body, preached to the spirits in prison, inasmuch as in this body the Lord is no longer ἐν σαρκί , but entirely ἐν πνεύματι .
Thus the passage says nothing as to Christ’s existence between His death and resurrection. If Act_2:31 presuppose the going of the dead Christ into Hades, the common dwelling-place of departed souls, this descensus ad inferos must not be identified with the one here mentioned, as also Wiesinger, Brückner, and Schott rightly observe; so that by drawing this distinction the disputed question, too, whether Christ descended into Hades, quoad animam or quoad animam et corpus, finds its correct solution. It must further be added that this passage gives no support whatever either to the doctrine of the Form. concordiae, that in Hades Christ “overcame the devil, destroyed the power of hell, and despoiled the devil of his might,” or to that of the Catholic Church of the limbus Patrum and Purgatory.
Connected with the words κατασκευαζομένης κιβωτοῦ are the thoughts which follow, in which stress is laid, not so much on the judgment which overtook unbelievers in the flood, as on the deliverance of the few.: εἰς ἣν ὀλίγοι .
διεσώθησαν διʼ ὕδατος ] The preposition διά is to be explained not as equal to ἐκ (Act_28:4 : ὃν διασωθέντα ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης ), nor as if it were ἐν (in medio aquarum), nor equivalent to non obstante aqua (Gerhard), nor even as a preposition of time (eo tempore, quo aquae inundaverant); but is to be taken either locally or instrumentally. διʼ ὕδατος is then either: “through the water,” or equivalent to: “by means of water.” The former view (Bengel, Steiger, de “Wette, Brückner, Wiesinger, formerly Hofmann also) seems to be confirmed by the verbum compos. διεσώθησαν . But διασώζειν , both in the LXX. and in the N. T. (cf. Mat_14:36; Luk_7:3, etc.), is often used as a strengthened form of σώζειν , without the peculiar force of διά being pressed. And thus it must be taken here, inasmuch as it contradicts the historical narrative in Genesis, to say that Noah and his family were saved by passing through the water. διά has accordingly here an instrumental force, so that διʼ ὕδατος indicates water as the medium through which the Noahites were delivered.[218] And this interpretation is alone in harmony with the context, inasmuch as the apostle in what follows gives special prominence to the fact that the N. T. deliverance is likewise effected by means of water. If water was the means of deliverance to Noah and those with him, “in so far as it bore those hidden within the ark, and thus preserved them from destruction, comp. Gen_7:17-18” (Weiss, p. 313; thus also Wolf, Pott, Jachmann, Schott), this implies recourse to a pregnant construction, inasmuch as the apostle unites the two thoughts in one: “they were saved by going into the ark” and “they were saved διʼ ὕδατος .” Hofmann seeks to avoid the assumption of a pregnancy by explaining ὝΔΩΡ here as the water “which began to overflow the earth,” and which compelled Noah to enter with those belonging to him into the ark, in support of which he appeals to Gen_7:11; Gen_7:13. But although these passages state that both the entering into the ark and the beginning of the deluge took place on the same day, still the latter event is not indicated as the motive of the former. According to the narrative in Genesis, it was the command of God which moved the Noahites to enter the ark, and as soon as they had done so, and God had closed the ark, the deluge commenced; cf. Gen_7:1; Gen_7:16-17.
Further, on Hofmann’s interpretation water can be regarded only in a very loose sense as the medium of deliverance; nor would it be in keeping with the subsequent parallelism. It must be noted that ὕδατος is anarthrous, and although by the term no other water can be understood than that of the flood, yet Peter’s object here is not to show that the same water which destroyed some served as the means of deliverance for others, but merely to state that the deliverance of Noah and those with him was effected by water, in order that this water then may be recognised as the type of the saving water of baptism (comp. Schott).
ὀλίγοι , τοῦτʼ ἐστιν ὀκτὼ ψυχαί ] ΤΟῦΤʼ ἘΣΤΙΝ Κ . Τ . Λ . justifies the use of the expression ὈΛΊΓΟΙ ; so much stress is laid on this particular, very probably in order to point out, on the one hand, the great number of those who perished, and on the other, the proportion to be looked for at the final judgment.
[218] Wiesinger has expressed himself in favour of the first version, but then remarks: “the writer conceives the water at the same time as the saving element;” Fronmüller, too, combines both interpretations: “in which few souls sought shelter, and were saved through the water and by it;” this is evidently altogether unwarrantable.