1 Peter 1:3

New Birth to Joy and Holiness

1:3 Blessed be ¹  the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he gave us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

1 Peter 1:11

1:11 They probed ²  into what person or time ³  the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating when he testified beforehand about the sufferings appointed for Christ ⁴  and his subsequent glory. ⁵ 

1 Peter 1:17

1:17 And if you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each one’s work, live out the time of your temporary residence here ⁶  in reverence.

1 Peter 2:20

2:20 For what credit is it if you sin and are mistreated and endure it? But if you do good and suffer and so endure, this finds favor with God. ⁷ 

1 Peter 3:20

3:20 after they were disobedient long ago ⁸  when God patiently waited ⁹  in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark ¹⁰  a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water.

[1:3]  ¹ tn There is no verb in the Greek text; either the optative (“be”) or the indicative (“is”) can be supplied. The meaning of the term εὐλογητός (euloghtos) and the author’s intention at this point in the epistle must both come into play to determine which is the preferred nuance. εὐλογητός as an adjective can mean either that one is praised or that one is blessed, that is, in a place of favor and benefit. Two factors of the author’s style come into play. At this point the author is describing the reality of believers’ salvation and will soon explain believers’ necessary response; this is in emulation of Pauline style which generally follows the same logical order (although the author here discusses the reality in a much more compressed fashion). On the other hand, when imitating the Pauline greeting, which is normally verbless, the author inserts the optative (see v. 2 above). When considered as a whole, although a decision is difficult, the fact that the author in the immediate context has used the optative when imitating a Pauline stylized statement would argue for the optative here. The translation uses the term “blessed” in the sense “worthy of praise” as this is in keeping with the traditional translation of berakah psalms. Cf. also 2 Cor 1:3; Eph 1:3.

[1:11]  ² tn Grk “probing.” The participle continues the sentence from v. 10 but has been translated as an indicative for English style.

[1:11]  ³ tn Or “time or circumstances,” focusing not on the person but on the timing and circumstances of the fulfillment.

[1:11]  ⁴ tn Grk “the sufferings unto Christ,” i.e., sufferings directed toward him, what he was destined to suffer.

[1:11]  ⁵ tn Grk “the glories after these things.”

[1:17]  ³ tn Grk “the time of your sojourn,” picturing the Christian’s life in this world as a temporary stay in a foreign country (cf. 1:1).

[2:20]  ⁴ tn Grk “For this [is] favor/grace with God,” used as a metonymy as in vs. 19 of that which pleases him, which he looks on with favor (cf. BDAG 1079 s.v. χάρις 2).

[3:20]  ⁵ tn This reflects a Greek participle, literally “having been disobedient formerly,” that refers to the “spirits” in v. 19. Many translations take this as adjectival describing the spirits (“who had once been disobedient”; cf. NASB, NIV, NKJV, NLT, NRSV, TEV), but the grammatical construction strongly favors an adverbial interpretation describing the time of the preaching, as reflected above.

[3:20]  ⁶ tn Grk “the patience of God waited.”

[3:20]  ⁷ tn Grk “in which,” referring to the ark; the referent (the ark) has been specified in the translation for clarity. Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.