Passage

1 Peter 4.17

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

For the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?

A sobering verse and an unusual argument.

Judgment begins with the household of God. The image draws on Ezekiel 9:6, where the destroyer is told to begin at the sanctuary, and on the prophetic pattern in which God's own people are addressed first. Peter applies this to the sufferings his readers are enduring, so the persecution is being read as the leading edge of a divine sifting rather than as evidence of divine absence.

The argument is a fortiori and it is left as a question. If it begins with us, what will the end be for those who do not obey the gospel? Verse 18 reinforces it with Proverbs 11:31 in its Septuagint form, if the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly appear?

The pastoral effect is double-edged and Peter intends both edges. The readers' suffering is given meaning, which consoles. And the reader is denied any comfortable superiority over the persecutor, since the same judgment is in view for both, only in a different order.

Scarcely saved should not be read as uncertainty about the outcome. In the Proverbs context it describes difficulty of passage rather than doubt of arrival, which is consistent with 1:5's guarding.

Verse 19 closes the section with the letter's characteristic move: commit your souls to a faithful Creator in well-doing. See Problem of Evil.

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.

• G5056 - telos, telos, Strong's G5056
• G2098 - euangelion, euangelion, Strong's G2098
• G2540 - kairos, kairos, Strong's G2540
• G2316 - theos, theos, Strong's G2316

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

• Christians Cannot Judge Objection Defeater

Concepts:

• Hypocrisy
• Survivorship Bias, via 1 Peter 4.12-19

Passages:

• Amos 3.2

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.