Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Peter 3:2
While they behold your chaste conversation [coupled] with fear.
2. while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear ] On the verb “behold” see note on chap. 1Pe 2:12. The word “coupled” is not in the Greek, and the true meaning of the word is that the “chaste conduct ” of the women who are addressed must have its ground and sphere of action in the reverential awe which is the right feeling of a wife towards her husband.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
While they behold your chaste conversation – Your pure conduct. The word chaste here ( hagnen) refers to purity of conduct in all respects, and not merely to chastity properly so called. It includes that, but it also embraces much more. The conduct of the wife is to be in all respects pure; and this is to be the grand instrumentality in the conversion of her husband. A wife may be strictly chaste, and yet there may be many other things in her conduct and temper which would mar the beauty of her piety, and prevent any happy influence on the mind of her husband,
Coupled with fear – The word fear, in this place, may refer either to the fear of God, or to a proper respect and reverence for their husbands, Eph 5:33. The trait of character which is referred to is that of proper respect and reverence in all the relations which she sustained, as opposed to a trifling and frivolous mind. Leighton suggests that the word fear here relates particularly to the other duty enjoined – that of chaste conversation – fearing the least stain of chastity, or the very appearance of anything not suiting with it. It is a delicate, timorous grace, afraid of the least air, or shadow of anything that hath but a resemblance of wronging it, in carriage, or speech, or apparel.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 2. Chaste conversation – with fear.] While they see that ye join modesty, chastity, and the purest manners, to the fear of God. Or perhaps fear, , is taken, as in Eph 5:33, for the reverence due to the husband.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Chaste conversation; free from all manner of impurities, and any thing contrary to the marriage covenant.
Coupled with fear; such a fear or reverence of your husbands, whereby out of the fear of God, and conscience of his command, you give them all due respect, and do not willingly displease them. See Eph 5:1-33; subjection is required, Eph 5:22, and fear, Eph 5:33.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
2. beholdon narrowly lookinginto it, literally, “having closely observed.”
chastepure, spotless,free from all impurity.
fearreverential,towards your husbands. Scrupulously pure, as opposed to the noisy,ambitious character of worldly women.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
While they behold your chaste conversation,…. Cheerful subjection, strong affection, and inviolable attachment to them, and strict regard to the honour of the marriage state, and to the preserving of the bed undefiled with lusts and adulteries:
coupled with fear; with reverence of their husbands, giving them due honour, and showing all proper respect; or with the fear of God, which being before their eyes, and upon their hearts, engages them to such an agreeable conversation.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Beholding (). First aorist active participle of , for which see 2:12. See 2:12 also for manner of life).
Chaste (). Pure because “in fear” ( ), no word in the Greek for “coupled,” fear of God, though in Eph 5:33 fear (reverence for) of the husband is urged.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
While they behold [] . See on ch. 1Pe 2:12. Conversation. See on ch. 1Pe 1:15. Rev., behavior.
Coupled with fear [ ] . Lit., in fear.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “While they behold your chaste conversation.” (epopetusantes) while discretely watching the (Gk. hagnen) pure, clean, or holy conduct or daily behavior of you —
2) “Coupled with fear.” (en phobo) which you live in reverential fear. Ecc 12:13-14; Heb 11:7; Heb 12:28.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
2 While they behold For minds, however alienated from the true faith, are subdued, when they see the good conduct of believers; for as they understood not the doctrine of Christ, they form an estimate of it by our life. It cannot, then, be but that they will commend Christianity, which teaches purity and fear.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE SPECIAL TEMPTATIONS OF WOMEN
1Pe 3:1-6; 1Ti 5:6.
DR. TALMAGE, when he was yet alive, said, There are men who conclude that because man was made first and woman afterward, that woman was an incident in the universe, a sort of side issue. He might have added that inasmuch as she was made from a mere rib from a mans side, her secondary station was thereby suggested. But there is a positive argument which any woman suffragist would never forget, and the force of which even dexterous men would pause to deny, namely thisthe order of creation in the Bible is from the lower to the higher, from grass to a man.
Gods later work is in every instance His better work, and if that be true, man is not the climax of creation, but woman, for she was the last Divine endeavor.
Again, it is more honorable to be made from the rib of a man than from the mud of the earth, hence women orators have the best of the argument.
But whether one holds to the evolution theory or to the more biblical explanation of a direct creation, the one fact confirmed by either and each of them is voiced by Jesus when He said,
Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? (Mat 19:4-5).
If that statement be accepted as absolutely accurate, then our question is answered. If they are one flesh, women are as much tempted as men, and by nature would yield to exactly the same temptations; but by breeding, education, domestic and social environment, their temptations become different and special.
I have chosen to apply our first text to
THE TEMPTATIONS OF GIRLHOOD
Youth is a hungry thing: its appetite for meats is not greater than its lust for emotional excitement. It pants for pleasure as the hart pants after the water brooks.
Girlhood has a natural love of pleasure. That fact invites no condemnation whatever. It is a pure result of human health and a natural expression of life in excelsis. The lamb is quite as frisky as the kid, although sheep are the Bible symbols of saints, and goats equally so of sinners. And the wholesome, high-minded girl has within her very physical, mental, and emotional nature the same gleeful spiritleaping for expressionthat plays in the heart and life of her vicious contemporary. Jane Adams is right in reminding us that this very force will either lift up and transform those who are really within its grasp, and set them in marked contrast to those who are either playing a game with it or losing it for gain, or else this beneficent current will carry them in wrong channels and take them to death and destruction when it should have carried them into the safe port of domesticity. He is an unwise father, and she is an unwise mother, who seeks for ever to suppress the emotion, and curb, and possibly destroy, the natural expression of adolescence. The Apostle does not say that she that loves pleasure is doomed therebylet us not misinterpret him; he says, She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth; by which he means, of course, makes it the end and object of living.
The danger is in abnormal development. The trouble is not that she loves pleasure; the trouble is that godless men and women, knowing that fact, have come to traffic in it. That is the explanation of dance halls and low theaters. The dance hall and the theater are not, and never were, a necessity born of youths love of pleasure. On the contrary, they represent solely the greed of gain. They were organized, not so much to meet a demand of the physical being, as to cultivate an appetite, and then fill the purse by feeding the same.
It is a positive amazement to hear men speak of the drink-house as a social and physical necessity. The social life of the saloon was never acceptable to any living mortal until his nature had first been vitiated; and it never catered to a natural appetite, but to a manufactured one. Not one boy in ten thousand is born with a lust for liquor; ninety-nine out of every hundred have been brought into such a lust by the vendors of beer and other intoxicants. It exists, then, not to meet the necessity of its patrons, but to provide the luxuries for its owners; and as young men often take their first fatal steps in the saloon, so the majority of girls more often have their first suggestions of evil in the devilish dance-hall and the sensual show-house.
If pleasure loving, then, is natural, pleasure living is peril. We have in this day some professed philosophers whose opinions are popular enough, who make up that crowd of near-eloquent, who are for ever discoursing upon living according to the natural bents of life. They are the fellows that have favored affinities instead of marriage; defended the saloon as the poor mans club room; discoursed eloquently about the dance hall as the social center for the tenement house district, and the cheap theater as the school of art for the submerged; and all that, and all that!
Why dont they go the limit and say, Since greed is a natural passion, gambling is to be the commercial order; since lust is a natural passion, pure love is to be abrogated; since anger is a natural passion, murder is but slightly immoral, if at all, and may be justified. God pity the young woman who ever gives ear to such philosophies, or ever gives her thought over to the domination of such devilish suggestions. For awhile she may be going the giddy round, and it may look to the world as if she were having a good time; but the invariable end for her is written into the Apostles speech, She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.
Our second text looks more largely to
THE MARITAL ENTICEMENTS
It is addressed to women who live in the married relation, and the Apostle speaks particularly of three thingsillicit love, foolish pride, and failing religion.
Illicit love!
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.
Society is not as badly smitten today in its youth as it is in its adult life. The recklessness of the girl in the dance hall does not so much menace the state and nation as does the more covered, yet accomplished, flirtation of wives and mothers who have forgotten the biblical law of subjection to their own husbands.
To be sure, the frivolities of the former make possible the fickleness of the latter; and the man who finds his helpmate in a dance-hall or ball-room, should not even be surprised when in later life she develops other affinities. He took her from the school of deception, where the black arts were at the head of the curriculum, and that which was begun as a comedy will terminate as a tragedy, and neither the solemn ritual of the Episcopal service, the sacred vows voluntarily assumed, nor the earnest prayer of the performing preacher can save the happiness of the contracting parties.
Bobby Burns, when he was ready to plight his troth to Mary Campbell, met her at the brook Ayr. They bathed their hands in the water and put them on the boards of a Bible and took their solemn vows. On the cover of the Old Testament of that Book to this day is Roberts hand-writing, and the very words of Lev 19:12, Ye shall not swear by My Name falsely, * * I am the Lord.
And on the cover of the New Testament, in his own writing, the words of Mat 5:33, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.
But Bobby went his way in dissoluteness and must have broken the heart of the girl who gave him her hand under the spell of so holy a promise.
And yet, dissoluteness upon the part of a man is certainly not worse than that upon the part of the woman; and when the day comes that she forgets to obey Peters injunction, to be in subjection to your own husbands, and adopts an illicit love, attempt deception as she may; and though she seek by every art of feminity to keep up the outward appearances of loyalty, the day of judgment is at hand; domestic affection is slain, the evidences of the true home are undermined, and destruction will speedily sit before its hearth in full possession of the whole house. This is one of the temptations of marital life.
But Peter speaks of another:
Foolish pride!
Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel.
From time immemorial most ministers have treated this Scripture as if Peter objected to the braiding of the hair, or to the wearing of jewels of gold, or to the putting on of apparel. Not at all; Peter is not saying you should not do these things. He is saying you should not be foolish enough to imagine that they are your chief adornment when you have put them on. It may be possible that the woman who braided her hair in that time was like the woman who blondeens hers now. The very act was a hint of her character. If so, then Peter would enjoin against it. And in that day, as in this, the way a woman wears her jewels is but a hint of what she is at heart, and the way she puts on her apparel is almost a positive proof of her purity or impurity. I passed a girl in the street. She had on a long and flashy black coat, and a white dress under it. The combination was striking to say the least. She had on a black and white hat that was a marvel of modern creative geniusor folly. It was set on the back of her head in order that nothing might escape her vision. She had a pure white dog at-the end of a black chain, and every fellow she passed turned and looked and made remark. The two nearest me, as she went by, said, My, what a beautiful dog! And positively they were not to be blamed. The meaning of her whole makeup was unmistakable, and any woman who puts up her hair after such a manner, puts on her jewels after such a manner, and puts on her apparel after such a manner as to make her a passing mark, should not be surprised if she receives insult; and, as a rule, she is neither surprised nor displeased.
But that is not the most insiduous and objectionable feature of feminine pride. Any sin that is sufficiently stamped is more harmless in consequence. Positively the modern style of womans dress, approved now by the largest circle of the sex, raises the question as to whether much social sanity remains. Take the abbreviated skirt, as an instance. Respect for the American woman has been depreciated by her adoption of this French importation. I am not saying that the woman of this day should be forced back to the long skirt of forty summers since; but I am saying that when a woman cannot sit down in a street car or even in the holy sanctuary without exposing the nether portion of her body, she is coming powerfully near the transgression of the Divine law, The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man (Deu 22:5). We have long had a saying that one might as well be out of the world as out of style. If this folly in womans dress goes much further, we will soon have a new oneOne might as well be in hell as in the style.
I know the folly of trying to bring the world to do the right thing. I might as well argue with the flesh and the devil, for these three are commonly classed together in Scripture. But it would seem that Christian women need the injunction of the Apostle, for after all our squirming and twisting and arguing and explaining away our Bible, still we have it in plain language and we cannot get away from it.
I would that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair or gold or pearls of costly array; but, which becometh women professing Godliness, with good works. We cannot help putting the question asked by the writer, Is any womans apparel modest that exposes her person like the apparel of some church women does? Is it any use for a woman to claim and profess purity whose scant apparel is shockingly suggestive of impurity, or costly array destructive of good works of Godliness? Shamefacedness does not spell brazen facedness. Will any question the truth of what the Christian Standard once said:
It is no more probable that the time is coming when it will be learned with amazement and sorrow of more than one professed Christian that the Holy Spirit was not joking when He prescribed the kind of dress the Godly should wear. There may be some serious dress accounts to settle in the day of the great Assize Court.
Falling religion! It calls upon them to reveal
the hidden man of the heart, m that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
The daughters of this generation can say what they like about the queer looks and homely appearance of the Puritan mothers, but we ask in all candor whether they expect to equal in character or in desirable accomplishments Harriet Newell, who gave herself to the redemption of India; Elizabeth Harvey who left her bright New England home for the life of Bombay, and the darkened heathenism, that she might illumine it; or Mrs. Lennox who breathed her last at Smyrna and cried as she faced her end, Oh, how happy! Or Mrs. Sarah D. Comstock, who sacrificed that she might save Burma, and who, when she gave up her children that they might come to America to be educated, kissing them, said, Oh, Jesus, I do this for Thee. Or even the mothers of the Wesleys, the Spurgeons, the Dwight Moodys, or the mothers of our Washington, our Jefferson, and Clay.
It is an excellent thing that women have such character as to command respect under any and all environments, and such a religious purpose as to incite reverence in even Godless men.
I stood in the chapel of Helen Chalmers in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh, and I said as I looked upon the fearful surroundings, Do you come here to hold services at night? O yes, she said. And do you never meet with an insult while performing this Christian: service?
To which she answered, Never. That young woman who has her father by her side, walking down the street with armed police at each corner, is not so well defended as that Christian woman who goes forth bearing in her very appearance the sign of the Cross, carrying in her heart the Word of God, and in her hand the Bread of Life.
After all, the Apostle has struck the adornment that makes a woman the most blessed and safe in this world and gives promise of the next. It is that incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
THE OLD TIME EXAMPLE
For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands.
The ancient womans example! As Sarah was an ensample to the women of Peters day, so the Godly mothers of yesterday are an ensample to the daughters of this hour. When I speak of yesterday I do not mean that all good women are in their graves; God forbid. But I do mean that the generation which gave us birth, however much we may have surpassed them in intellectual attainments, are yet our ensample in moral character and Christian accomplishments. One week I was called to visit three such women, members then of this body of believers, each of them upon a bed of affliction, and each perhaps nearing the end by reason of age. I speak of Mother Mears, Mother Russell and Mother Daniels. The mention of these names puts the spirit of reverence upon every youthful woman of this congregation who ever came into contact with them; and if she have a virtue left, compels her to say, Let my last days be like theirs, so far as character and righteous conduct are concerned. Deborahs description is applicable here, Mothers in Israel, ensamples to younger women they were.
Their adornment has been of the diviner sort.
Trusting in God, they have
adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:
Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are.
I went once upon a time into a house, the fortunes of which represented millions, and met there the mother and daughter. When the dinner was over and the evening had passed, and I was at my home, I was compelled to say, That young woman was well dressed and good looking and an excellent conversationalist; but the true adornment of that house was in the mothers quiet spirit, evident character and unquestioned accomplishments.
And just as there is many a lad who thinks his father is an old fogy because he does not speak first class English, notwithstanding the fact that that fathers truer education is the outcome of sixty summers and his accomplishments have made the lads blessings possible, so there is many a lass or youthful married woman who laughs at the old time ideas of the grandmother in the home, when for her own sake she should be sitting at her feet, and learning of her how to be clothed in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
I believe, as Dr. Talmage said, that such accomplishment is a certain product of allowing Christ to take full possession of the soul, remembering, He would be your Friend in every perplexity, would comfort in every trial, would defend in every strait. And I do not ask you to bring, like Mary, the spices to the sepulcher of a dead Christ, but to bring your all to the feet of a living Jesus. His Word is peace. His look is love. His hand is help. His touch is life. His smile is Heaven. O come then, in flocks and groups! Come like the morning light tripping over the mountains. Wreathe all your affections on Christs brow; set all your gems in Christs coronet; let this Sabbath hour rustle with the wings of rejoicing angels and the towers of God ring out the news of souls saved.
This world its fancied pearl may crave,Tis not the pearl for me;Twill dim its luster in the grave,
Twill perish in the sea.But theres a pearl of price untold Which never can be bought with gold;O thats the pearl for me.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
(2) While they behold . . .The same curious word as in 1Pe. 2:12, and the tense, which is ill-represented by while they behold, sets us at the moment of the triumph of the wifes conduct, literally; having kept, or when they have kept an eye on your chaste conversation. The husband is jealously on the watch to see what his wife does who has embraced these foolish notions; at last he breaks down. Jesus must be the Messiah, or his wife could not have been so chaste! The adjective chaste is here to be taken in a large sense; it is the same which enters into the verb translated purify in 1Pe. 1:22, and it is implied that the fear (i.e., of the husband; comp. Note on 1Pe. 2:18) has been an incentive to this sweet virtue; your life so immaculate in fear, or even almost so timidly pure. Leighton says, It is a delicate, timorous grace, afraid of the least air, or shadow of anything that hath but a resemblance of wronging it, in carriage or speech, or apparel, as follows in the third and fourth verses.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. While they behold Closely observe and scrutinize.
Chaste conversation Modest, pure, and holy behaviour.
With fear With a spirit of reverence toward their husbands. Such conduct would evince that the religion which induced and sweetened such a life must be divine.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2. Readiness for a suitable defence of their faith, 15, 16.
Be ready For an account to men, while thus having supreme regard for Christ.
Always No exception as to time.
An answer An apology, in the old sense of a defence of what is true, with a refutation of objections. St.
Paul’s speech before Agrippa (Acts 26) is a masterly specimen.
Every asketh Honest inquirers should receive instruction; cavillers and revilers are entitled only to silence. Mat 7:6; Mat 27:12. But probably magistrates are especially meant.
A reason An intelligent, rational account. The Romish response of “I believe because the Church believes,” is thus repudiated beforehand.
Of the hope That is, of eternal glory, involving the basis of truth in fact and doctrine, upon which it rests. The answer thus became a defence of Christianity itself, seldom, indeed, with the learning and power of a St. Paul, a Justin Martyr, or a Tertullian, but always with intelligence and reason.
Meekness With clearness and firmness, but (so the oldest MSS. read) with modesty in speech and bearing, and not with insolence or arrogance.
Fear Due respect to the interrogator.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Pe 3:2. While they behold your chaste conversation Dr. Heylin’s translation here, though not literal, seems well to express the sense of the sacred writer: While they behold your purity of manners, and the respect you have for them.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
1Pe 3:2 . ] for ., cf. chap. 1Pe 2:12 . The participial clause here serves as a further explanation of the preceding . . .
: “ chaste ,” in the full extent of the word, not only in contradistinction to proper, but to whatsoever violates the moral relation of the subjection of the wife to her husband. This is determined by (not equal to, in timore Dei conservato: Glossa interl.; Grotius too, Bengel, Jachmann, Weiss, Fronmller, etc., understand by here the “fear of God”), as connected in the closest possible way with the shrinking from every violation of duty towards the husband; [168] cf. chap. 1Pe 2:18 .
[168] Schott unwarrantably maintains that in this interpretation it is not which is more precisely defined by the homogeneous adjectival expression , but . by .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
Ver. 2. Whiles they behold ] Curiously pry into. Carnal men watch the carriages of prolessors, and spend many thoughts about them.
Your chaste conversation ] When Livia the empress was asked how had she got such a power over her husband that she could do anything with him? She answered, Multa modestia, By my much modesty. (Dio in Aug.) A prudent wife commands her husband by obeying.
Coupled with fear ] Not slavish fear of blows, but reverent fear: 1. Of offending God, by using unlawful means to get their husband’s love, as by plaiting of the hair, &e. 2. Of offending their husbands by immodesty or frowardness.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2 .] when they behold (lit. “having beheld:” the time of the is slightly antecedent to that of , but not enough to justify the use of the past. part. in English. On the verb, see ref.) your chaste behaviour ( , in the largest sense, not with its proper reference only: modest and pure) coupled with fear (so the E. V., admirably: conducted, led, maintained, in a spirit of reverence to your husbands, cf. Eph 5:33 , . The connexion of words is | , not, as Huther, | | ).
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
1Pe 3:2 . , having contemplated ; see on 1Pe 2:12 . . , cf. 1Pe 1:17 and Eph 5:21 . : as no object is expressed, must be supplied. not merely chaste but pure, cf. 1Pe 1:22 and 1Pe 3:4 .
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
While, &c. = Having beheld. App-133.
chaste. Greek. hagnos. See 2Co 7:11.
coupled with = in. App-104.
fear. Here used in the sense of reverence. Compare Eph 5:33, where the verb is used.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
2.] when they behold (lit. having beheld: the time of the is slightly antecedent to that of , but not enough to justify the use of the past. part. in English. On the verb, see ref.) your chaste behaviour (, in the largest sense, not with its proper reference only: modest and pure) coupled with fear (so the E. V., admirably: conducted, led, maintained, in a spirit of reverence to your husbands, cf. Eph 5:33, . The connexion of words is | , not, as Huther, | | ).
Fuente: The Greek Testament
1Pe 3:2. , in fear) This is to be referred to , chaste; not to , conversation. Fear is something general, commended by the apostle to all Christians, but especially commended to women, that their conversation be chaste.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
behold: 1Pe 3:16, 1Pe 1:15, 1Pe 2:12, Phi 1:27, Phi 3:20, 1Ti 4:12, 2Pe 3:11
with: 1Pe 3:5, 1Pe 3:6, 1Pe 3:15, Eph 5:33, Eph 6:5, Col 3:22
Reciprocal: Mat 6:29 – even Joh 15:16 – that your 1Co 7:16 – O wife Jam 3:13 – a good
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Pe 3:2. This continues the thought in the preceding verse. Chaste means pure and conversation refers to the general life or conduct. Fear is used in the sense of a person who has respect for another and who is unwilling to do anything improper toward him. If a husband observes that his wife is that kind of woman, and that the religion she professes prompts her unto such an attitude toward him, he may become a disciple also as a result of such godly influence.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
1Pe 3:2. having beheld your chaste behaviour coupled with fear. On the force of the beheld, as implying close observation, see on 1Pe 2:12, where the same term occurs. The behaviour is styled chaste, not in the limited sense of the English adjective, but as covering purity, modesty, and whatever makes wifely conduct not only correct but winsome. It is further defined by a couple of words which mean literally in fear, but are happily paraphrased by our A. V., coupled with fear, after Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan. What is meant is not exactly the fear of God, but rather a sensitive respect for the husband and the married relation, the chastity or purity of behaviour is exhibited as associated necessarily with the dutiful spirit that recoils from everything inconsistent with the womans and the wifes position. Nothing could better express what is meant by this fear, therefore, than Leightons well-known description of it as a delicate and timorous grace, afraid of the least air or shadow of anything that hath but a resemblance of wronging it, in courage, or speech, or apparel.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 2
Fear; respect and reverence,–that is, for the husband.