Preview #7: The Commitment of the Calling—1 Peter 3:8–17
A sample from ch. 7 of Narrative, Calling, and Missional Identity in 1 Peter (pp. 162–64)
In view of my monograph’s publication date being brought forward two weeks to Thursday 16 November 2023 (YAY!), I’m putting out some more previews in the lead up to the big day. Once again, you can check it out at the publisher’s website here. Today’s preview comes from a chapter that considers what it means to be blessing towards those who mistreat Christians because of their faith. Earlier chapter previews at the following links:
7.3.1 David’s Sojourn: Life between Promise & Inheritance
It is well noted that Psalm 33 LXX is about the Lord’s deliverance from suffering, making it especially relevant for the context of this epistle.[60] Given the strong diaspora/sojourning motif found in 1 Peter, Psalm 33 LXX is well suited to the narrative that Peter advances.[61] It is worth noting that in an unquoted part of Psalm 33 LXX, there is a significant translation from the MT to the LXX that often goes overlooked and is important for our potential understanding of 1 Peter’s use of the psalm. In Ps 34:5b MT (Heb.), ְמגוָּרה (megurah), is most commonly translated as fear or terror.[62] Yet the LXX translators do not use ְמגוָּרה φόβος as might be expected. Rather, the LXX writers choose to translate as παροικιῶν (i.e., sojournings; Heb. ָמגוֹר ). It appears, therefore, that the LXX translators were making a play on the two Hebrew words allowing them to capture the sense of both fear and sojourning apparent in the Hebrew. It is this point that plays into Peter’s use of the imagery: παροικιῶν is the same word used in 1 Pet 1:17 and 2:11 where Peter defines the socio-spiritual location of his recipients as sojourners through their faith in Christ.
In Jobes’ estimation, LXX translators took David’s quandaries to be the fears that arose during his sojourn with the Philistines while on the run from King Saul (see 1 Samuel 21ff).[63] This is significant, because as noted above, while many scholars acknowledge that Psalm 33 LXX is about the Lord’s deliverance from suffering, few go beyond this assessment. Chapple’s recent work, however, has shown—convincingly in my opinion—that the exodus narrative and sojourning motif present therein, as interpreted through the gospel lens, plays the decisive role in 1 Peter’s theology and parenesis.[64]
On this basis, I contend that the idea of sojourning plays an important role in how one reads the quotation of Psalm 33 LXX in 1 Pet 3:10–12. As noted just prior, the psalm is explicit in referring the reader back to 1 Samuel 21 which details David’s sojourning among the Philistines as he fled from Saul. However, the larger narrative of David’s relationship with Saul is just as important for our understanding of 1 Peter’s use of Psalm 33 LXX. Initially, we must recall that the kingdom of Israel was stripped from Saul because of his disobedience in 1 Samuel 15. In the following chapter, the shepherd-boy David is anointed to be the next king of Israel (1 Sam 16:11–13). This is the beginning of David’s life between God’s promise and the inheritance of that promise, regarding his ascension to Israel’s throne. Beginning in 1 Samuel 18, Saul begins to resent David and is unsuccessful in his attempt to kill him. By 1 Samuel 19, David is forced to flee for his life and goes to Samuel at Naioth. From this point onwards, David lives as a fugitive until Saul dies in 1 Samuel 31. It is not until 2 Sam 2:4 that David receives the kingdom that had been promised back in 1 Samuel 16.
I summarise this narrative of David’s life to make the point that in addition to it demonstrating that the Lord delivers the righteous one from adversity, it also reveals the various struggles and trials David encountered as he lived his life between the promise of kingship (1 Sam 16:11–13) and his inheritance of the crown (2 Sam 2:4). The use of Psalm 33 LXX thus points the recipients of 1 Peter to see that they share in this very same reality. That like David, the Anatolian churches live between promise and inheritance.[65] David’s sojourns between the promise of the kingdom and its inheritance typologically align with the Anatolian church’s own experience under the new covenant.[66]
In short, David’s story is also the story of the Petrine churches that are called to understand that their various trials, sufferings, and difficulties take their ‘meaning from the pattern of the Suffering and Vindicated Righteous that runs like a thread through the fabric of Israel’s Scriptures and that comes to decisive expression in the career of Christ’.[67] The ethical exhortations of the passage are to be understood as being lived out between promise and inheritance and David provides the OT prototype to which Peter refers.[68] From an [social identity theory] perspective, we might say that Israel provides the communal type in 1 Pet 1:1–2:10, while in the present context, King David and Abraham provide individual types in 3:10–12 and 3:9, respectively.[69]
E.g., David G. Horrell, The Epistles of Peter and Jude, EC (London: Epworth, 1998), 64.
Jobes, 1 Peter, 220; idem, ‘“Got Milk?” Septuagint Psalm 33 and the Interpretation of 1 Peter 2:1–3’, WTJ 63 (2002): 1–14; idem, ‘“Got Milk?” A Petrine Metaphor in 1 Peter 2.1–3 Revisited’, Leaven 20, no. 3 (2012): 121–26.
Alongside Jobes (see previous note), Woan, ‘The Use of the OT in 1 Peter’, 142–43, also picks up on this change yet, unlike Jobes, finds it to be inconsequential.
Jobes, 1 Peter, 220.
Chapple, ‘Appropriation of Scripture’, 165ff, sees twelve such allusions in 1 Peter 1 alone. Most notable are the references to the ‘elect’ (1:1); the covenant ceremony performed by Moses at Sinai (1:2; cf. Exod 24:3–8); and the language of inheritance (1:4; cf. Num 36:2; Deut 2:12, etc). See n. 90 for further references. That these allusions appear in the first four verses of 1 Peter 1 indicate at an early stage that the Exodus narrative is a strong frame of reference for the Petrine author.
Chapple, ‘Appropriation of Scripture’, 167, expresses the same truth in terms of living between ‘redemption’ and ‘inheritance’ with regards to Israel’s liberation from Egypt and subsequent sojourn in the wilderness (see also n. 112, for further references). With regards to King David’s sojourn, however, I believe it best to use the expressions ‘promise’ and ‘inheritance’ with reference to his receiving the kingship from Saul. That said, the idea of redemption is present in that God continually saves David from Saul’s hand.
Chapple, ‘Appropriation of Scripture’, 170.
Joel B. Green, 1 Peter, THNTC (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007), 227.
For more on typological interpretation with specific reference to 1 Peter, see Leonhard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, trans. Donald H. Madvig (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982), 152–58.
Of course, Sarah (3:5–6) also acts as an individual type in 1 Peter, as does Noah (3:20); both of whom—like David, Abraham, and the nation of Israel—lived between a God-given promise and the fulfilment of that promise in their respective ways.