Questioning
the text is one of the exegete’s principle “stock-in-trade” procedures. 1 Peter 3:6 contains a participial phrase (μὴ φοβούμεναι
μηδεμίαν πτόησιν) begging for an answer to a question, “Why include ‘terror’
(πτόησιν) in the verse?” The last term is defined syntactically as a cognate accusative of the inner object (Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics,
1996, 189-90) affecting the meaning of the verbal to which it relates (φοβούμεναι).
This usually involves emphasis. In this case, however, there is another reason
for the cognate accusative.
The NT
Greek word root (φοβ-) carries two basic senses: (1) to have fear, being afraid, and (2) to have respect, so used in verse 2 where the wife is told that the
husband may be saved as he beholds his wife’s chaste and respectful behavior towards him. In verse 6 the
participle φοβούμεναι needed to be understood differently from the way in
which Peter used the word root in the immediately preceding context (ἐν φόβῳ,
verse 2) meaning “respect.” Therefore, Peter needed to do something to avoid
the negative thought that he was encouraging wives not to show respect to their
husbands. This was done by means of adding the cognate accusative of the inner object (πτόησιν) to restrict the sense of the
participle to fear. Thus, the wives are told that they like Sarah are
not to live in fear of their husbands.
The
exegetical importance of this observation is clear. The term φοβούμεναι does
not refer to respect but to fear, and the reason for this syntactical
construction is lexical and not emotional, being restricted by πτόησιν, the cognate accusative of the inner object.
Furthermore, this negative phrase really does help define what genuine respect
looks like for the wife in verses 1-6. It consists of living with her husband respectfully (verse 2) and fearlessly (verse 6) because she regards him as good and
who would not knowingly do her harm.
The
point of this article is simply to remind ourselves to question the biblical
writer as to why he used the words he did in difficult passages so that
we do not go beyond his intended meaning. Here we asked and answered, “Why
insert terror (πτόησιν) into verse 6?”
Exegetes who focus much of their exegetical energy doing word meaning
studies could miss Peter’s sense and move πτόησιν beyond its restrictive
function by emphasizing the “terror”
idea. Thankfully, most English translations of this verse have done well in
confining the participle to “fear.” The NIV captured Peter’s meaning admirably
by translating, “and do not give way to fear.”
