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2. ὡς ἀρτιγέννητα βρέφη, as new-born babes. The words evidently refer to ἀναγεγεννημένοι in 1Pe 1:23. βρέφη is nowhere else used in this figurative sense, the usual word employed being νήπιοι. ἀρτιγέννητα also occurs nowhere else. The phrase must not however be exaggerated as implying that the readers were very recent converts. Many of them must have been Christians of long standing.
γάλα. In 1Co 3:2 and Heb 5:12 the necessity for a “milk diet” is referred to as a sign of immaturity incapable of digesting the more solid food to which mature (τέλειοι) Christians ought to advance, but no such idea is intended here. There is a true sense in which the Christian should never grow out of infancy. As our Lord said, Mat 18:3, “Except ye become as little children (παιδία) ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven,” and in 1Co 14:20 St Paul bids his readers τῇ κακίᾳ νηπιάζετε, cf. Ep. ad Diog. App. 11, Οὗτος ὁ ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, ὁ καινὸς φανεὶς καὶ παλαιὸς εὑρεθείς, καὶ παντότε νέος ἐν ἁγίων καρδίαις γεννώμενος. So here Christians, whatever may be their standing, are to retain the simple innocent cravings of a babe at his mother’s breast who desires no other food.
λογικὸν γάλα can hardly be translated milk of the word as in the A.V. It means milk to feed your reason (λόγον). So R.V. spiritual milk. Λόγος in Greek has a double meaning, (1) word, (2) reason, but there is no instance of the latter use in the Bible. Even the Λόγος doctrine in Joh 1:1 is probably not the same as that in Philo where it includes both the wisdom of God and God’s utterance of Himself or Word. In St John it probably represents merely the Word of God, i.e. the medium of communication with the world, which was regularly used in the Targums in passages where God is described in the O.T. as speaking or appearing to men. On the other hand λογικός in the sense of “rational,” though not so used in Plato and Aristotle, was a favourite word with the Stoics and passed into common use—e.g. in Philo. In later ecclesiastical writers ἡ λογικὴ ψυχὴ denotes the highest element in the soul—τὸ πνεῦμα.
The only other passage in the N.T. where λογικός occurs is in Rom 12:1, where Christians are bidden to present their bodies as “a living sacrifice to God which is their reasonable service,” λογικὴν λατρείαν, i.e. rational service as contrasted with the offering of an irrational animal. As St Peter also three verses later goes on to speak of Christians “offering up spiritual sacrifices,” it is probable that the passage in Romans was in his mind, and from it he may have borrowed λογικόν in a sense unsupported by any Biblical use of λόγος. At the same time his immediately preceding language about Christians being begotten again by the word of God (λόγου) was probably suggested by St James’ language about the word of truth as the origin of man’s creation followed by an instruction to receive the ἔμφυτον λόγον. St Peter may therefore mean that the λογικόν or spiritual element in man, deriving its new birth as it does from the Λόγος of God, is also fed by the Λόγος, just as a mother feeds her babe at her own breast. So Clement (Paed. i. 6, p. 127) says, “He who regenerated us nourishes us with His own milk, the Word, for everything which gives birth to aught else seems at once to supply nourishment to its own offspring.” In this case, although λογικὸν γάλα cannot be translated “milk of the word” but milk to feed your reason or spirit, at the same time “the Word of God” is the milk by which spiritual life must be nourished if it is to grow unto salvation.
ἄδολον. R.V. which is without guile, or unadulterated. The adj. does not occur again in the N.T. but ἀδόλως is found in Wis 7:14, and cf. 2Co 4:2, δολοῦντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ. In one of the Fayyûm Papyri ἄδολον coupled with καθαρόν is used of unadulterated wheat. Just as mother’s milk is by its very nature unadulterated, so the food which God supplies to His children is free from any of the contaminating influences found in the sustenance which heathenism offers to the soul of man. But the special element of adulteration intended here is guile which has been referred to just above (πάντα δόλον).
ἐν αὐτῷ = in virtue of that food.
εἰς σωτηρίαν, cf. 1Pe 1:5. Christians are already in a state of salvation but must “grow in grace” in order that God’s work in them may be completed.