The text of 1 Peter 3:1-7 and other similar NT passages  have often been used to suppress able Christian women, both in the home and in the church. The controversial note on 1 Peter 3:7 in the 1547 Matthew Bible perhaps best conveys the misogyny which has occasionally pervaded the interpretation of these passages: “And [if the wife] be not obedient and healpfull unto [her husband], endeavoureth to beate the feare of God into her heade, that thereby she maye be compelled to learne her dutie, and to do it.”  To the contrary, the Petrine exhortation of 1 Peter 3:1-7 ought to be understood as a call for the reformation of the patriarchal culture of the ancient Mediterranean, not as a proof-text for the inferiority of women to men. Through exploration of the household ethics of the Greco-Roman world and comparison with that of 1 Peter, as well as detailed exegesis, it will be shown in this essay that the author of 1 Peter in fact intends to challenge the misogynistic social mores of the Greco-Roman culture, calling instead for mutual honor and equality among all Christians.

Translation

3:1 Likewise, wives, [do this]  by submitting yourselves to your own husbands, so that that even if some disbelieve/disobey the Word, through the conduct of their wives they will be gained without a word, 2 having observed your reverent, pure conduct. 3 Let your adornment not be external—braiding of hair and wearing of gold or putting on of clothing—4 but the secret person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a humble and quiet spirit, which is most precious before God. 5 For in this way, at one time, also the holy women who hoped in God would adorn themselves by submitting themselves to their own husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him “master,” whose children you became when you did good and did not fear anything fearful. 7 Husbands, likewise, [do this] by living together with the females as the weaker vessel in accordance with knowledge, imparting honor, as also co-heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers might not be hindered.

Introduction and Background

First Peter 3:1-7 is situated within the so-called “household code” (sometimes called by its German designation, Haustafel) of 1 Peter, which begins in 2:13 and continues through 3:12. As the part of the household code addressed to wives (3:1-6) and husbands (3:7), 3:1-7 follows the initial exhortation for all believers to submit to political rulers (2:13-17) and the admonition for slaves to submit to their masters (2:18-25). The exhortation following the address to wives and husbands is once again addressed to all believers (3:8-12).

Codes of household ethics found in NT texts like 1 Peter 2:13–3:12 and also, for example, Col 3:18–4:1 have their historical and social background in the dominant Greco-Roman culture, specifically that set forth by the great Greek philosopher Aristotle.  Of particular importance to the study of such NT household codes is Aristotle’s discussion “concerning household management” in Politics I. He summarizes the ideal for household relationships as follows:

And now that it is clear what are the component parts of the state, we have first of all to discuss household management; for every state is composed of households. Household management falls into departments corresponding to the parts of which the household in its turn is composed; and the household in its perfect form consists of slaves and freemen. The investigation of everything should begin with its smallest parts, and the primary and smallest parts of the household are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children; we ought therefore to examine the proper constitution and character of each of these three relationships, I mean that of mastership, that of marriage, and thirdly the progenitive relationship. (Pol. I, 1253b [Rackham, LCL])

For Aristotle, then, the household is a microcosm of the government; that is, proper authority exercised in the household will produce stability, harmony, and hierarchical order in the state.  Within this system of ethics, one of the tenets for understanding the relationship between husbands and wives was the inferiority of women to men. Plato explains, “Now the better are the superiors of the worse, and the older in general of the younger; wherefore also parents are superior to their offspring, men to women and children, rulers to ruled” (Laws XI 917a [Bury, LCL]).

Influential Roman philosophers, governors, and emperors found this ethic of household management quite useful in their attempts to bring order to an aggressively expanding, imperialistic Roman empire. Since Rome regarded itself as a household with the emperor as the pater familias, the center of the Roman world was the home.  As Cicero put it, the home is “the foundation of the civil government, the nursery, as it were, of the state” (De Officiis I 54 [Page and Rouse, LCL]). As ruling conquerors, it fit the value system of the Roman Empire to argue that some persons are intellectually and politically inferior—beginning, of course, in the home and expanding to conquered nations and the greater Roman Empire. Any attempt to threaten their categories, then, would be perceived as a threat to the Roman Empire itself.

It is against this background that one must read the passages concerning the status of women in the NT as a whole, and particularly this passage in 1 Peter. In the midst of the imperialistic Roman Empire which was suspicious of foreigners with religious and social values different from their own, Christianity emerged as a religion which gave equal status to women in the sight of God (cf. Gal 3:28, e.g.). The household code of 1 Peter, then, serves as a paraenesis to ameliorate domestic tensions and foster growth in character in a situation of non-conformity to the social status quo,  and perhaps also as an apologetic against the suspicion of the Roman empire.

Exposition

The adverb homoiōs (“likewise”) that begins this section of the household code takes up the theme of submission introduced by the imperatives of 2:17 and is not, as Bigg has suggested, a command that wives submit to their husbands in the same way that slaves must submit to their masters.  Like the household slaves (2:18) and the husbands (3:7), wives are also to fulfill the commands of 2:17 (“honor all, love the kindred believers, fear God, honor the emperor”), in their case by submitting themselves to their husbands.

Achtemeier is quite right to note that the participle hupotassamenai (“submitting yourselves”) is not so much imperatival as it is instrumental, providing the means by which the wives are to fulfill the commands of 2:17.  Though such imperatival force is widely held to be present,  Daube has shown that such usage cannot be said to have been normal practice in Hellenistic Greek.  Indeed, it is the nature of the participle to subordinate to a finite verb, so such an independent imperatival force cannot be simply assumed. In this instance the participle may easily be connected to the imperatives of 2:17 as an adverbial participle of means. As such, it may carry over an imperatival nuance; however, its primary function is to express the means by which the wives are to fulfill the commands of 2:17, namely “by submitting yourselves to your own husbands.” It is also important to stress here that this is not a general statement of subordination of women to men, but rather of the Christian wife to her husband, which is made especially clear by the presence of idiois (“your own”).

Wives in the ancient world were expected to worship the gods of their husbands. According to Sarah Pomeroy, “A family’s religion was transmitted through males, and the pater familias was the chief priest. Upon marriage, a girl renounced her father’s religion and worshiped instead at her husband’s hearth.”  In his “Advice to Bride and Groom,” Plutarch contends:

A wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in, and to shut the front door tight upon all queer rituals and outlandish superstitions. For with no god do stealthy and secret rites performed by a woman find any favor. (Moralia II, 140D [Babbitt, LCL])

In the case of Christian wives married to pagan husbands, which is apparently the case here, the situation is therefore potentially volatile. Their failure to follow their husbands’ religious beliefs would be viewed as disruptive to the social order and as such would entail immediate suspicion within the Roman world.  Moreover, a wife’s failure to submit to her husband in this regard, as well as her participation in socially questionable behavior, would impart shame upon her husband.  Peter’s advice, however, is not for the wives to abandon their worship of Christ, but for them to continue in Christian living and to honorably and admirably submit to their husbands in all other regards.

The motive for submission by the wives is clearly stated in the ἵνα clause: “in order that, even if some disbelieve/disobey the Word, through the conduct of their wives they will be gained without a word.” With the help of a play on the word λόγος—in the first instance meaning the gospel, and in the second meaning spoken word—the author orients himself to the patriarchal world in which these women find themselves: “Whether it can be concluded from the expression ‘without a word’ that in principle women should not preach … is questionable; the point is probably the worldless mission through those who as inferiors were not in the position to do the talking.”  Indeed, the wives of 1 Peter are called to preach, though through silent rather than verbal witness. As Daube has convincingly shown,  the verb kerdēthēsontai (“they will be gained”) here has a clear missionary sense: through the quiet, pure and reverent conduct (3:2) of their wives, the author is virtually certain (note the future tense) that their husbands “will be gained” to the Christian faith.

What follows in 1:3-4 is a typical contrast between outward and inner beauty, a contrast not infrequent in the ancient world. In Prov 31:30, for instance, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” Likewise, virtue was valued over beauty in the pagan world, partly because outward adornments were often perceived as instruments of seduction and deception.  In his Enchiridion, Epictetus writes:

Immediately after they are fourteen, women are called “ladies” by men. And so when they see that they have nothing else but only to be bed-fellows of men, they begin to beautify themselves, and put all their hopes in that. It is worth while for us to take pains, therefore, to make them understand that they are honoured for nothing else but only for appearing modest and self-respecting. (40 [Oldfather, LCL])

The author’s instructions against outward adornment, then, probably served a dual purpose. On the one hand, by instructing Christian women to live on the highest level of pagan morality, it served an apologetic function. If a Christian wife was leaving her home without her husband to attend Christian worship, society would perceive that act alone as questionable. By leaving her home unadorned, however, her pure intentions would be all the more clear.  On the other hand, simplicity of lifestyle ought to be a Christian characteristic, as was taught by Jesus himself (cf. Matt 6:19-34, e.g.). While some of the early church fathers understood this as a wholesale prohibition against any external adornment, this clearly goes well beyond what the text says.

Set over against lavish external adornment is “the secret person [ho kruptos … anthrōpos]” within one’s heart (3:4), which in this context refers to a disposition hidden from public view, visible directly only to God. Both the language and the message echo Matt 6, in which Jesus repeatedly stresses that “the Father, who sees what is done in secret [tōi kruptōi], will reward you” (6:4; cf. 6:6, 18).  It is this true self—the self “of” or “within the heart” if we take the genitive as qualitative, or the hidden self “which is the heart” if it is appositive—whose adornment is important.

This internal adornment is to be accompanied by  “the imperishable quality of a humble and quiet spirit,” qualities modeled by Jesus himself (cf. Matt 11:29; 21:5). “Gentleness” or “humbleness” (prautēs) in the Greek world was a highly prized social virtue in human relationships that contrasted with roughness, bad temper, sudden anger, and brusqueness. It was viewed as an adornment of the soul and a virtue especially prized in women.  For our author, however, such virtues are ideal not only for women, but for the entire Christian community (cf. 3:16). In this instance, the two virtues “humble” and “quiet” together form the ideal response to slander by husbands and others.  Such virtues would not only please the pagan husbands, but they are also, and most importantly, “most precious before God.”

To underline the preciousness of inward virtue, the author appeals to the lives of “the holy women” of the past “who hoped in God.” The phrase houtōs gar … kai (“for in the same way … also”) introduces 3:5-6 as a support for the exhortation given in 3:1-4. While groups of people are called “holy” in the NT, the phrase “holy women” (hai hagiai) is unique in the NT. It is probably true, as many commentators have suggested,  that the following reference to Sarah (3:6a) indicates that the author has in mind the matriarchs of the family of Abraham, though it may be a general reference to the women of Israel. Whoever these OT exemplars may be, their example is clear: “As those who hoped in God they decked themselves out, as is explained by means of the participle upotassamenai, with subordination to their husbands.”

This is also true for the explicitly named Sarah, whom the author presents as a model for submission because she called her husband “master” (3:6). It is important to note, as Elliott has, that kurios (“lord/master”) here reflects the conventional Hellenistic and Jewish view of the wife as under the authority of her husband, who by marriage legally became her “lord.”  It need not imply anything more. Genesis 18:12 (LXX) is the only lexical connection between the OT story of Sarah and Peter’s claim. Here Sarah refers to Abraham as her kurios; however, she does not address him by that term directly and, moreover, she appears more disrespectful of him than obedient to him. Indeed, the verb ὑπακούω or any other verb meaning “to obey” is never used in the LXX with reference to Sarah’s relationship with Abraham. To the contrary, Abraham is said to have obeyed Sarah in Gen 16:2; and in Gen 21:12, God tells Abraham to do whatever Sarah tells him to do.  This was apparently an embarrassment to Philo and Josephus, whose softer and more self-effacing portraits of Sarah may reflect a long-standing interpretive milieu.

As Kiley points out, if the author’s emphasis is upon obedience, then the motifs of Genesis 12 and 20 may form the relevant background for the reference to 18:12. In these episodes, Sarah is portrayed as submitting to her husband’s questionable ruses, perhaps intended by our author as a parallel to the Christian wife called to suffer and the husband who disobeys the Word. The author’s reflection on the Abraham-Sarah story, then, may be meant to establish her “not just as a model of obedience but as a model of those wives who obey their spouses in an unjust and frightening situation in a foreign land/hostile environment.”

It is also quite possible that intertestamental literature lies in the background. In particular, T. Martin has compellingly argued that Testament of Abraham illuminates the background for this reference because it contains several situations in which Sarah calls Abraham “lord” and obeys him. Furthermore, Sarah is conceived as the “mother of the elect” and appears as an example of good deeds and fearlessness.  Jobes is probably correct that our author is most likely drawing on Jewish interpretive tradition, of which all of the above suggestions are a part, without intending a choice of any one passage from Genesis or any other text in order to understand this reference to Sarah.  The author wishes to present Sarah, who in Jewish tradition is a virtuous woman by obedience to her husband, as an exemplar of the inward virtue the wives have been called to put on.

The author turns to the final segment of his household code with an exhortation to Christian husbands (3:7). The husbands, like the wives (homoiōs), are to fulfill the Christian duty set forth in the imperatives of 2:17, but obviously under different social circumstances. This is done “by living together [sunoikountes]”  with their wives in accordance with the knowledge that she is “the weaker vessel.” The use of the comparative adjective “weaker” (asthenesteros)—probably a reference to physical rather than spiritual or moral weakness—clearly implies that both men and women are “vessels” and so should not be taken to imply anything degrading.

Commentators have perhaps too quickly assumed that the females in view are the believing wives of Christian husbands.  Kelly argues that since “in the circumstances of ancient society their wives and families must normally have conformed [to the religion of the husband], … there is no need to deal with the agonizing problems, and missionary opportunities, of mixed marriages.”  While it is true that the Greco-Roman social mores expected the wife to follow the religion of her husband, it must be emphasized that this was an expectation and not a rule or a law. Indeed, we know from 1 Cor 7:12-16 that there were Christian husbands married to unbelieving wives in the earliest churches. Moreover, if the husbands addressed in this exhortation have believing wives, the pattern of the household code (i.e. slaves with unbelieving masters [2:18-25], wives with unbelieving husbands [3:1-6]) is discontinuous.

Carl Gross has proposed that the structure of the Greek in the verse and its context in the Petrine Haustafel suggest that the husbands addressed in this verse are most likely married to wives who are not Christian.  If this is the case, the clause hōs kai sugklēronomois karitos zōēs should be understood to mean that the husband should impart honor to his non-Christian wife “as [he imparts honor] also to coheirs of the grace of life,” presumably with the same evangelistic intent as the wives who have non-Christian husbands. In any case, it is clear that for the Christian wife, her status as a coheir levels the spiritual ground between her and her Christian husband. We see, then, the reformation, though not the outright abolition, of the patriarchal culture.

The final hina (“in order that”) clause indicates the seriousness with which our author takes the exhortation for men to treat their wives honorably as coheirs of God’s grace. They must treat their wives with honor “in order that [their] prayers might not be hindered.” While it is grammatically possible that the genitive plural pronoun humōn (“you”) could be construed to mean that the prayers of both men and women will be hindered,  Achtemeier is quite right to note that there is nothing in the context to lead one to assume that the pronoun refers to anyone but the men in this verse. Furthermore, “[t]he notion that God would ignore the prayers of women who are not treated in a Christian way would be to punish the weak who are abused, an idea hardly in accord with Christian tradition about the relation of God to the downtrodden.”  The point, then, is clear: God is so offended by men who treat women as inferior that such treatment may result in the Christian husband’s inability to communicate with God.

Conclusion

The exhortation, “Wives, be submissive” would not have come as a surprise in the context of the Greco-Roman society where it was first heard. As we have seen, the widespread adoption of the Aristotelian household ethic resulted in a milieu in which the perceived inferiority and subjection of women was not only the norm, but was indeed expected in an Empire modeled on household relationships. The domestic code of 1 Peter, however, rejects Rome’s insistence upon the absolute religious and social subordination of women to their husbands. To Christian women with Christian husbands today, this exhortation no longer conveys the message as it would have been heard in the first-century Mediterranean. Balch comments:

The very words which those early slaves and wives understood gave them more independence, freedom, and power in a repressive, hierarchical, patriarchical Roman society are now interpreted to mean that Christian women should have less freedom than their secular counterparts.

Our author’s intent clearly was not outright abolition of the patriarchal culture, but reformation of it. He insists that women stand equally with men before God as coheirs of God’s salvific eschatological grace of eternal life. There is no higher status than this. If contemporary Christians will read 1 Peter in this light, there is no basis for denigration or relegation of women to an inferior status in this text.

Tags: Exposition

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