1 Peter 4:18 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And if the righteous scarcely be saved Escape with the utmost difficulty. So the word μολις, rendered scarcely, signifies. That is, If it be not without much difficulty that the Christians are secured and preserved in those overflowing, devouring judgments which are coming on the Jewish nation; where shall the ungodly and the sinner The impenitent and unbelieving, the obstinate and wicked part of the Jewish nation; appear? That is, what will become of them? Dreadful will be their destruction. The meaning of the apostle, however, may be, If the righteous, ο δικαιος, the righteous man, be scarcely, or not wholly saved from suffering, that is, from chastisement, (in which light the apostle represents the persecutions to which the Christians were exposed,) if God judges, and, by various temporal afflictions and calamities, punishes him, where shall the ungodly and impenitent sinner appear? How terrible will be the wrath which will fall upon him? If the faults of the loyal subject, yea, of the dutiful son, be not passed over unnoticed, unchastised, by the holy and just Governor and Judge of the world, what has not the enemy and rebel to fear? Perhaps this may be the chief meaning of the apostle, and not the deliverance of the Christians from the Roman invasion, in which very few of them were concerned, to whom the apostle addressed his epistle; namely, those sojourning in Pontus, &c. See chap. 1 Peter 1:1. And the passage may be intended to signify also the difficulty with which pious men get to heaven, through this dangerous and insnaring world. Compare Acts 14:18; Acts 27:7-8; Acts 27:16. where the word μολις, here used, signifies with difficulty. “The turn of the latter clause of the verse in the original, που φανειται, is very lively; it seems as if the apostle were solicitous to lead the sinner to consider where he should hide his head, since wherever he was he would find God immediately appearing against him as an irresistible enemy. This he might say, by way of warning to persecutors, and to encourage Christians to hope that God would vindicate their cause, and preserve them from turning aside to crooked paths. And this the connection with the following verse favours.” Doddridge.