Passage

1 Peter 2.18

Book: 1 Peter · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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Setting

• Speaker: Peter, writing through Silvanus (5:12)
• Audience: scattered believers across five Roman provinces of Asia Minor, described as sojourners and exiles and facing social hostility rather than state persecution
• Location: written from "Babylon" (5:13), most likely a designation for Rome
• Time period: c. AD 62 to 64, before the Neronian persecution

Theological reading

Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

One of the hardest verses in the letter, and it should not be softened, because softening it forfeits the argument the passage actually makes.

The word is oiketai, household servants, not the more general douloi. Peter addresses domestic slaves directly, which is itself notable: they are treated as moral agents capable of being commanded, in a culture that classified them as property.

The instruction is not an endorsement. Peter gives no defence of the institution and offers slaveholders no corresponding permission. What he gives is counsel for people with no legal recourse whose behaviour was the only variable within their control. Verse 19 makes the ground explicit, that it is acceptable if for conscience toward God a man endures griefs suffering wrongfully, and the wrongfulness is stated rather than denied.

The Christological turn is the point (vv. 21-23). Peter immediately grounds the counsel in Christ, who when he was reviled reviled not again, and who suffered unjustly. The slave is not told that his treatment is deserved or acceptable; he is told that he is walking where Christ walked. That is a claim about dignity, and in a household where he had none it was the strongest available.

The codex treats the wider question of biblical slavery texts, including the moral objection this verse anchors, at Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater and Slavery.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

No Strong's-tagged lexicon entry is curated for the key terms of this verse; the lexicon covers roughly 100 contested terms, not every word. See Lexicon Roadmap.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

• Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater
• Israelite Slavery Possession-vs-Ownership Defeater

Concepts:

• Biblical Slavery Objection

Lexicon:

• G1401 - doulos

Passages:

• 1 Peter 2.22

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

• ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
• WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
• KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
• YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.