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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
20. ποτε. The days of their disobedience are described as being long past at the time when the tidings was preached to them.
ἀπεξεδέχετο is read by nearly all Greek MSS. The reading of the T.R. ἅπαξ ἐξεδέχετο seems to have been a conjectural reading of Erasmus—but ἅπαξ ἐδέχετο is read by some cursives; ἅπαξ would imply that the time of Noah was the only occasion when God exercised such patience.
ἀπεκδέχεσθαι is used several times by St Paul of Christians waiting for the return of Christ etc. but except in this verse the object or person waited for is always expressed.
εἰς ἣν is probably a “pregnant construction” = by entering into which ark, cf. Mar 13:16; Act 7:4; 1Pe 5:12 etc. It is not probably governed by διεσώθησαν (as Dr Bigg suggests who contrasts it with εἰς θεόν which he connects with σώζει).
ψυχαί is used of living persons in Gen 46:22 and Act 2:41; Act 7:14; Act 27:37; Rom 13:1.
διασώζειν is used of making a person perfectly whole, Mat 14:36; Luk 7:3, of St Paul being brought safely through to Felix, Act 23:24, and of escaping safe to land, Act 27:44; Act 28:1; Act 28:4.
διʼ ὕδατος might mean merely, were brought safely through the water. But more probably it means were saved by means of water. The same water which drowned the guilty bore in safety the inmates of the ark. This makes the analogy with the water of Baptism more forcible. So in the first prayer in our Baptismal Office, “Almighty and everlasting God, who of thy great mercy didst save Noah and his family from perishing by water,” the words “by water” should probably be connected with “save” and not with “perishing.” The prayer specifies three instances in which God has employed “water” mystically (a) the Flood, (b) the Red Sea, (c) the Baptism of Jesus.
NOTE. For similar instances where the meaning of σώζεσθαι διά has been disputed, cf. 1Co 3:15 σωθήσεται οὕτω δὲ ὡς διὰ πυρός—where the sense is probably not saved as it mere by means of fire but escape as it were through the fire like a man whose house is burned over his head; 1Ti 2:15 σωθήσεται διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας, which might mean that woman shall be brought safely through the pain and peril of childbearing—but more probably = saved by means of the childbearing, which was part of the penalty of woman’s sin (Gen 3:16), but by which she has attained her truest dignity, especially when it culminated in the childbearing by woman of the Incarnate Son of God.