1 Pet. iv. 19. The apostle evidently takes his arguments from the past, and recounts the proofs of their having done the will of God, ver. 32, 33. Nevertheless, doing the will of God for the present and future is not excluded. This doing of the will of God is taken for granted in all the virtues of believers, which are reckoned up in the llth chapter : otherwise the things which there receive praise, for example, ver. 33, would have been vain ; comp. Matt. vii. 21, etc. — Hopiawte, ye may carry off, obtain, receive} the promise, i.e. life eternal, which believers of the Old and New Testament will conjointly receive at the coming of Christ. See the following verse. The promise, life eternal, is found at ch. iv. 1, ix. 15, xi. 13, xii. 26. Individual blessedness is judicially refused to none, but the great consum mation, as yet future, is difficult. There will be a great /3gX- rtuwg, amelioration, in the future day, which ought to be esteemed much more highly than it is. Even the present flourishing con dition of faith, which many so largely experience, cannot be compared with it. — TT,V tKayyt\iot.v, the promise) ptn, Hab., quoted above.
37. Mtxpw offov Sffov) yet a little ivhile. So LXX., Is. xxvi. 20. The word ftixpbv, with the addition of Saov offov, takes the diminu tive, but at the same time the indefinite form, and therefore accords very wrell with this passage : see Gen. xxvii. 30 : "JN7 sy'wero offov s^qXQsv, was only just gone out. — 6 sp^o^vog, He that eometh) The apostle, by the addition of the article, elegantly turns the words of the prophet to Christ. — yfyi) will come.
38. 'O &) The apostle transposes the halves of the verse, and so, by adding the following verse, makes a very suitable Chias mus. For the things opposed to each other are repeated : faith unto life, drawing bad' : drawing back, faith unto life, ver. 38, 39. The particle ds, but, forms an antithesis to the slothful. — btKawg, just). See Kom. i. 17, note. — ex xiffrsus, l>y faith) LXX., ex irigreug pov, or in the same sense, f&ou ex vriffreug, by my faith. Comp. the pronoun in like manner prefixed, 1 Cor. xi. 24 ; John vi. 54, ix. 10; Heb. in the faith of Him, namely, who was Seen, i.e. of Christ, who will not fail (disappoint1) : an elegant antithesis. I refer the text of the New Testament to the Heb.
1 Referring to the 'E«i/ wrepwy, said of the vision in Hab. ii. 3, 4. —En.