1 Peter Chapter 4, Verse 4
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4: εν ω ξενιζονται μη συντρεχοντων υμων εις την αυτην της ασωτιας αναχυσιν βλασφημουντες
4: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the
same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:
4: Wherein they think it strange that you run not with them into the
same confusion of riotousness: speaking evil of you.
Wherein they think it strange. In respect to which vices, they who were once your partners and accomplices now think it strange that you no longer unite with them. They do not understand the reasons why you have left them. They regard you as abandoning a course of life which has much to attract and to make life merry, for a severe and gloomy superstition. This is a true account of the feelings which the people of the world have when their companions and friends leave them and become Christians. It is to them a strange and unaccountable thing, that they give up the pleasures of the world for a course of life which to them seems to promise anything but happiness. Even the kindred of the Saviour regarded him as "beside himself," (Mk 3:21,) and Festus supposed that Paul was mad, Acts 26:24. There is almost nothing which the people of the world so little comprehend as the reasons which influence those with ample means of worldly enjoyment to leave the circles of gaiety and vanity, and to give themselves to the serious employments of religion. The epithets of fool, enthusiast, fanatic, are terms which frequently occur to the heart to denote this, if they are not always allowed to escape from the lips.
That ye run not with them. There may be an allusion here to the well-known orgies of Bacchus, in which his votaries ran as if excited by the furies, and were urged on as if transported with madness. See Ovid, Metam. iii. 529, thus translated by Addison:
"For now, through prostrate Greece, young Bacchus rode, Whilst howling matrons celebrate the god; All ranks and sexes to his or orgies ran, To mingle in the pomp and fill the train."
The language, however, will well describe revels of any sort, and at any period of the world.
To the same excess of riot. The word rendered excess (anacusiv) means, properly, a pouring out, an affusion; and the idea here is, that all the sources and forms of riot and disorder were poured out together. There was no withholding, no restraint. The most unlimited indulgence was given to the passions. This was the case in the disorder referred to among the ancients, as it is the case now in scenes of midnight revelry. On the meaning of the word riot, see "Eph 5:18 Tit 1:6".
Speaking evil of you. Gr., blasphemy. see "Mt 9:3".
The meaning here is, that they used harsh and reproachful epithets of those who would not unite with them in their revelry. They called them fools, fanatics, hypocrites, etc. The idea is not that they blasphemed God, or that they charged Christians with crime, but that they used language fitted to injure the feelings, the character, the reputation of those who would no longer unite with them in the ways of vice and folly.
