The verse is the second of two a fortiori questions that close the section on judgment beginning at v. 12. Verse 17 argues from the household of God to those who disobey the gospel; v. 18 restates the same argument in borrowed words, quoting Proverbs 11:31 LXX almost verbatim. Three decisions carry the weight:

1. μόλις locates the difficulty in the passage itself, not in the moral effort of the righteous. The righteous are barely brought through — a statement about the narrowness of the way out of the fire (πύρωσις, v. 12), not about the precariousness of their standing before God.
2. σῴζεται is present passive and durative: a rescue in progress, with the agent unexpressed. Peter is not asking whether the righteous will be saved but describing what their salvation looks like while the ordeal is on.
3. ποῦ φανεῖται is left as a question. Whether the implied answer is ‘nowhere at all’ or ‘somewhere unspeakable’ is genuinely undecided, and turning the interrogative into a declarative (‘there will be no place for the ungodly’) settles in the reading text what the Greek leaves open.

The single article over ἀσεβὴς καὶ ἁμαρτωλός, with a singular verb, describes one person twice, not two classes. The English must not manufacture a second referent.

Built onbdag · na28

Proposed — pending reviewJ. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary 49 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1988)

The verse is a quotation, unmarked by any citation formula, of Prov 11:31 LXX: εἰ ὁ μὲν δίκαιος μόλις σῴζεται, ὁ δὲ ἀσεβὴς ποῦ φανεῖται. Peter drops the μέν … δέ correlation (his own καί … does the coordinating), and adds καὶ ἁμαρτωλός to the second member — an addition that keeps the LXX’s two-member shape while broadening the description.

The Hebrew of Prov 11:31 runs differently: הֵן צַדִּיק בָּאָרֶץ יְשֻׁלָּם וְאַף כִּי־רָשָׁע וְחוֹטֵא — roughly, ‘if the righteous is requited on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner.’ The Greek translator read the Hebrew consonants along a different line, producing a rescue verb (σῴζεται) with an adverb of difficulty where MT has a verb of recompense (שׁלם, ‘be repaid’). Two features of the LXX are directly relevant here:

• The LXX supplies Peter’s ἁμαρτωλός parallel from the Hebrew itself. MT’s pair רָשָׁע וְחוֹטֵא (‘wicked and sinner’) is precisely ἀσεβὴς καὶ ἁμαρτωλός. Peter’s text therefore agrees with the Hebrew’s doubled description while following the Greek’s verb and syntax — evidence that he knows the fuller form of the verse, whether from a Greek text closer to MT than our LXX or from familiarity with the Hebrew.
• The Hebrew’s explicit אַף כִּי (‘how much more’) is absent from both LXX and 1 Peter. Neither Greek text spells out the escalation; both leave it to the rhetorical question. Per the standing policy on first-class conditions in a fortiori arguments, no ‘how much more’ is supplied in the rendering.

Note also that in Proverbs the ‘saving’ of the righteous belongs to a wisdom context of temporal recompense. Peter relocates it into the eschatological judgment beginning at the household of God (v. 17), which is a canonical-intertextual reuse of the earlier text, not a report of its original sense.

μόλις is an adverb of effort against resistance: barely managing, getting through only with difficulty. The concrete usage is fixed by the Acts 27 shipwreck narrative, where the ship μόλις makes headway (27:7), μόλις comes alongside Cnidus (27:8), and the crew μόλις secures the boat (27:16). In each case something is achieved, and achieved only just.

Two drifts must be blocked:

• Frequency. Modern English ‘scarcely’ and ‘hardly’ have moved toward ‘almost never.’ ‘Barely’ or ‘with difficulty’ keeps the sense of effort. ‘Scarcely’ is retained only in the liturgical register.
• Relocation of the difficulty. Renderings such as ‘if it is hard for the righteous to be saved’ transfer the difficulty from the passage to the subject’s moral exertion, and from there it is a short step to reading the verse as doubt about whether the righteous will make it. The Greek attaches μόλις to the verb of rescue: the way out is narrow, not the righteous person’s grip insecure.

Against the LXX Prov 11:31 background, μόλις already stands in the source text; Peter did not choose it de novo, which further weakens any attempt to load it with a distinctively Petrine anxiety.

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

Present passive indicative, third singular. Two features are load-bearing.

Aspect. The present is durative: a rescue underway, not one accomplished or one merely predicted. This matches Paul’s τοῖς σῳζομένοις (1 Cor 1:18) and σῴζεσθε (1 Cor 15:2), and it matches 1 Peter’s own situation — readers in the middle of a πύρωσις (4:12) whose deliverance is in process. English must mark it with the progressive in the literal and study tiers: ‘is being saved.’ A flat ‘is saved’ imports a completed state; a future ‘will be saved’ changes the tense outright.

Voice. Divine passive. The agent is unexpressed and must stay unexpressed; ‘God barely saves the righteous’ inserts a subject Peter withheld and makes the difficulty God’s.

On the standing σωτηρία policy the base gloss is ‘save,’ with the width of the word (rescue, deliverance, being brought safe through) footnoted rather than varied. Here the passage-through sense is strongly active — the fire of v. 12, the household under judgment in v. 17 — so ‘brought safe through’ is used in the study and modern tiers to make the image visible, without displacing the base gloss.

Built onbdag · silva-becnt

One article, two coordinated adjectives, one singular verb (φανεῖται). The construction describes a single referent under two heads, exactly parallel to the single article over two divine titles at Phil 4:20. Rendering ‘the ungodly and the sinner’ manufactures two classes and then leaves the singular verb stranded.

The reading text therefore has ‘the ungodly and sinful one.’ The older doubled form (‘the ungodly and the sinner’) is retained only in the declared liturgical register, where its cadence is established, with the compression noted.

Note that the pairing is not Peter’s invention: MT Prov 11:31 already has רָשָׁע וְחוֹטֵא as a doubled designation of one figure, and the LXX psalms regularly pair ἀσεβής and ἁμαρτωλός in a single description (Ps 1:1, 5).

Built onbdf · na28

α-privative on the σέβομαι stem: failing to render God his due. This is a God-ward term, the antonym of εὐσεβής, and the LXX standard for רָשָׁע over against δίκαιος (Ps 1; Prov 3:33; 11:31). ‘Wicked’ drifts to general moral badness and loses the reverence root; ‘impious’ is accurate but archaic outside liturgical register. ‘Ungodly’ is retained across ἀσεβής, ἀσέβεια, and ἀσεβέω so the family stays visible in concordance.

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

Substantival adjective naming a standing characterization, not a single act. Where it stands alone as a designation (Mark 2:15-17; Luke 18:13; Rom 5:8) it is rendered ‘sinner’; where it shares an article with another adjective, as here, it is rendered adjectivally (‘sinful one’) so that English does not generate a second referent from a coordinating καί.

Keep the ἁμαρτ- root visible against ἀδικέω (‘wrong,’ fixed at Gal 4:12) and ἄνομος (‘lawless’).

Built onbdag

φανεῖται is the contract future middle of φαίνω: come into view, become visible, show oneself. In judgment contexts the spatial sense is live (cf. Matt 24:30, of the sign of the Son of Man appearing), and the whole force of the clause depends on it — the question is where there is a place for such a one to be seen. Paraphrases like ‘what will become of him?’ or ‘where will he end up?’ abandon the appearance-verb and, in doing so, pre-empt the reading that answers ‘nowhere.’

ποῦ is the interrogative adverb, fronted before the verb. The fronting is emphatic and is preserved in English word order where possible.

Both readings are defensible from the Greek, and neither may be built into the reading text. The interrogative and the question mark stand; converting to a declarative (‘there will be no place for the ungodly’) resolves in translation what the text leaves open.

Built onbdag · bdf

Proposed — pending reviewPaul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996)

A first-class condition (εἰ + present indicative) whose apodosis is a rhetorical question rather than a statement. The protasis is entertained as real for the purposes of the argument — but Peter chose the conditional form, and per the standing policy it is not rendered ‘since,’ which closes the rhetorical gap the conditional deliberately leaves for the hearer to fill.

The argument is a fortiori, and the escalation is not verbalized. MT Prov 11:31 has an explicit אַף כִּי (‘how much more’); both the LXX and 1 Peter drop it and let the interrogative carry the inference. Supplying ‘how much more’ in English would repair a compression that two Greek witnesses independently chose to leave standing.

Built onbdf · muraoka-lxx

The καί at the head of the verse coordinates: v. 17 and v. 18 are two runs at one argument, not question and answer.

• v. 17: judgment begins ἀπὸ τοῦ οἴκου τοῦ θεοῦ → τί τὸ τέλος τῶν ἀπειθούντων;
• v. 18: ὁ δίκαιος μόλις σῴζεται → ὁ ἀσεβὴς … ποῦ φανεῖται;

Both end in an unanswered interrogative; both move from the harder case of the insider to the unspoken case of the outsider. The parallel is why v. 18’s δίκαιος must be understood as the same group as v. 17’s οἶκος τοῦ θεοῦ — that is, the suffering readers, not a general class of upright persons. And it is why the argument’s conclusion is drawn in v. 19 with ὥστε: the ones who suffer are to deposit their lives with a faithful Creator, precisely because the ordeal they are in is the narrow way through, not evidence against them.

Note the connective must be rendered (§10). Dropping καί makes v. 18 read as an independent proverb rather than the second limb of a single movement.

Built onsilva-becnt · bdf

Proposed — pending reviewJohn H. Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 37B (New York: Doubleday, 2000)

Generic substantival singular, taken over from the LXX proverb. Per the standing δικαιοσύνη policy the same English root is used across the forensic and ethical poles, so ‘righteous’ rather than ‘just’ or ‘upright.’

The referent is fixed by the parallel with v. 17: not righteous persons in general but the household of God under judgment — the readers themselves. Per §3 the masculine singular is generic and covers a mixed-sex referent; the literal tier keeps ‘the righteous [one]’ and the modern tier renders ‘the righteous person,’ with the grammatical masculine noted rather than neutralized silently.

Built onbdag

The Greek of the verse is not seriously in dispute; NA28 prints it without variation units. What variation exists in the tradition is assimilative:

• Some witnesses supply μέν after ὁ δίκαιος and δέ after ὁ ἀσεβής, restoring the LXX Prov 11:31 correlation that Peter dropped. The shorter, less correlated text is what the critical editions print, and the direction of change is plainly toward the source text.
• Minor orthographic variation in σῴζεται (σώζεται) carries no weight.

Metzger’s committee treats the verse as a straightforward LXX citation and records no substantive problem. The interesting textual question here is not in the Greek manuscripts of 1 Peter but in the relation between LXX Prov 11:31 and MT — discussed under the substrate section.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

The verse was read early as a warning to the church rather than a speculation about the fate of outsiders — which is to say, the Fathers generally kept the a fortiori pointed the direction Peter points it.

Cyprian cites 1 Pet 4:17-18 (with Prov 11:31) in the collection of testimonies on discipline and on the severity of judgment falling first on God’s own people. The rhetorical force he draws out is admonitory: if the household is tried first, the household has less room for complacency, not more.

Augustine repeatedly uses the iustus vix salvus fit of Prov 11:31 / 1 Pet 4:18 in the anti-Pelagian argument, to press that even the righteous are saved with difficulty and by mercy rather than by the sufficiency of their own attainment. Whether this presses μόλις further than the adverb warrants is a fair question — the Greek locates the difficulty in the passage, not in the adequacy of the person — but Augustine’s instinct that the verse cuts against self-confidence is faithful to Peter’s argument.

The Latin tradition’s vix is a good equivalent of μόλις (it carries the same ‘only just’ force), and ubi parebit? keeps the appearance-verb and the open question, without the paraphrase modern versions are tempted into.

Proposed — pending reviewCyprian of Carthage, Ad Quirinum (Testimonia) III, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1972) · Augustine, De natura et gratia, in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 60 (Vienna, 1913)

• ‘barely’ for μόλις in modern and literal tiers, ‘scarcely’ reserved for the liturgical register, per the frequency-drift argument above.
• ‘is being brought safe through’ in the modern/smooth tier makes the passage-through sense visible without displacing the base gloss ‘save,’ which stands in the literal and study tiers as ‘is being saved.’
• ‘the ungodly and sinful one’ — one article, one referent, one verb.
• The question mark stands. No declarative rendering, and no supplied answer in the reading text.
• No ‘how much more.’ The escalation is carried by the interrogative, as in both Greek witnesses.