What Does 1 Peter 3:2 Mean?

(2) **While they behold . . .**—The same curious word as in 1Peter 2:12, and the tense, which is ill-represented by “while they behold,” sets us at the moment of the triumph of the wife’s 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 1Peter 1:22, and it is implied that the “fear” (*i.e., *of the husband; comp. Note on 1Peter 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.”