Verse 3 closes the third and sharpest of three antitheses that qualify the single imperative ποιμάνατε in v. 2 (“shepherd”). The pattern is fixed: a negative adverb or participle, then ἀλλά with its positive counterpart — not under compulsion but willingly; not for shameful gain but eagerly; not as lording it over but becoming patterns.

Two things carry the weight. First, κατακυριεύοντες — a compound of κύριος that in the LXX is what conquerors do to subject peoples, and in the Gospels what Gentile rulers do (Mark 10:42; Matt 20:25). Peter puts the elders’ own possible conduct into that lexical field. Second, τῶν κλήρων, a genuine crux: the “allotments” are most probably the portions of the congregation assigned to individual elders, but the word later became the technical term for the ordained ministry (“clergy”), and reading that back into the verse inverts its sense — the κλῆροι would become the elders rather than the flock they must not trample.

The positive member is quietly severe. Not “be examples” (εἶναι) but γινόμενοι — an ongoing becoming — and not the singular τύπον but the plural τύποι: each elder is himself a mould. The word is die-language, the stamp that leaves its own shape in what it strikes.

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

The verse has no finite verb. It hangs entirely on ποιμάνατε (v. 2), extended by the participle ἐπισκοποῦντες, and then by three balanced μή/ἀλλά pairs. Verse 3 is the third pair, marked by μηδʼ (μηδέ elided before ὡς).

The first two pairs contrast adverbs (ἀναγκαστῶς / ἑκουσίως, αἰσχροκερδῶς / προθύμως); the third breaks the pattern and contrasts participial phrases. That break is itself data: the fault named here is not a manner of doing the work but a mode of holding the office, and it therefore needs a participle rather than an adverb.

The negatives are μή-forms throughout because the whole construction depends on an imperative — the regular Koine rule, carrying no independent emphasis (BDF §430; and see the standing corpus entry on μή + participle).

The verse-final semicolon (Greek colon) in NA28 is editorial; the sentence in fact runs on into v. 4, where καί plus a genitive absolute supplies the promise that answers the whole charge.

κατακυριεύω is κυριεύω (“be lord of”) with perfective κατά-: to exercise lordship down upon something, hence to subjugate, master, hold under. The genitive is its regular object.

The LXX distribution is decisive for register. It renders כָּבַשׁ and רָדָה in Gen 1:28 (subdue the earth) and Gen 9:1, and thereafter it is overwhelmingly the language of conquest and subjection: Num 21:24; 32:22, 29; Ps 9:26, 30 LXX (the wicked over the poor); Ps 71:8 LXX (dominion from sea to sea); Jer 3:14; Dan 11:39. The verb names the exercise of power over the unresisting.

In the NT it occurs four times. Acts 19:16 has the demon overpowering the exorcists — physical mastery. And Mark 10:42 / Matt 20:25 place it in the mouth of Jesus, describing precisely what οἱ δοκοῦντες ἄρχειν τῶν ἐθνῶν do and what his disciples must not: οὐχ οὕτως δέ ἐστιν ἐν ὑμῖν. A first-century Christian hearing κατακυριεύω applied to leadership within the assembly would hear that saying.

Rendering. The κύριος root is audible in Greek and cannot be reproduced in English without paraphrase; “lording it over” keeps the root at the cost of a colloquialism, and is retained in the literal tier for that reason. “Domineering over” is the cleaner modern equivalent. Excluded: “ruling over” (κατά- carries the excess, and Peter is not forbidding elders to lead — v. 2 commands them to shepherd), “being masters of” (drifts to δεσπόζω), and “tyrannizing” (imports a political category the verb does not name).

The present participle is durative — a settled way of holding the office, not an episode.

Proposed — pending reviewJohn H. Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 37B, New York: Doubleday, 2000 · Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with revised supplement, Oxford: Clarendon, 1996

κλῆρος is the lot cast (Matt 27:35; Acts 1:26), then the thing obtained by lot, then any assigned portion or share. In the LXX it is the standard term for the tribal allotments of Canaan (Num 26:55-56; Josh 14–19 passim) and, crucially, for Israel itself as YHWH’s own portion (Deut 9:29, ὁ κλῆρός σου; cf. Deut 32:9 with the cognate σχοίνισμα).

At 1 Pet 5:3 the plural with the article, governed by κατακυριεύω, admits several construals. All of them are ancient, and the choice materially changes what the elders are forbidden to do.

Rendering policy. Retain an allotment-word — “the allotted [portions],” with the supplied noun bracketed. This keeps (a) and (b) both available and blocks (c). Excluded from the reading text: “clergy” (anachronism), “those in your charge” (adopts (a) outright and drops the lot-image), and “God’s heritage” (adopts (b) and supplies θεοῦ, which the Greek here does not have — Peter wrote τοῦ θεοῦ one clause earlier, with ποίμνιον, and withheld it here).

Proposed — pending reviewJ. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary 49, Waco: Word, 1988 · Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament, 2nd ed., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998

ὡς with the participle here is characterizing, not comparative — it names the capacity or category in which the action would be done. The corpus has already fixed this at 1 Pet 4:11 (ὡς λόγια θεοῦ, ὡς ἐξ ἰσχύος) and 4:15-16 (ὡς φονεύς … ὡς Χριστιανός): ὡς identifies, it does not liken.

The consequence for rendering is that “as if lording it over” and “like men who lord it over” are both excluded. Those turn a categorization into a simile and let the elders off — the point is not that they might resemble Gentile rulers but that domineering is what they would then be doing.

Note that ὡς governs only the negative member. The positive member has no ὡς: τύποι γινόμενοι is a bare predicate-plus-participle. The asymmetry is worth preserving in English (do not supply “but as patterns”), since it means Peter is not offering an alternative role to play but an actual becoming.

τύπος derives from τύπτω, “strike”: the mark left by a blow, hence a stamp, an impression, a die or mould, and derivatively a model or pattern. The corpus entry already fixed for Phil 3:17 rules ‘pattern’ over ‘example,’ because ‘example’ is countable and individualizing while τύπος names the shape that reproduces itself in what it forms. The Vulgate’s forma is a better guide here than English ‘example.’

The NT range: the pattern shown to Moses for the tabernacle (Acts 7:44, from Exod 25:40 LXX); the prefigurative sense (Rom 5:14, Adam a τύπος of the coming one); the moulded pattern of teaching (Rom 6:17, τύπος διδαχῆς); and the leader-as-pattern (Phil 3:17; 1 Thess 1:7; 2 Thess 3:9; 1 Tim 4:12; Titus 2:7).

Two features of the wording at 1 Pet 5:3 carry weight.

First, the plural τύποι against a single collective τὸ ποίμνιον. Paul at Phil 3:17 wrote the singular τύπον with a plural ἡμᾶς — one shape, several instances. Peter reverses it: several dies, one mass to be stamped. If κλῆροι are the assigned portions, the plural τύποι matches them man for man.

Second, γινόμενοι rather than ὄντες. Per the standing corpus policy on γίνομαι in imitation and paraenetic contexts (Phil 3:17; Gal 4:12), the verb is not εἰμί: it denotes entry into and continuance in a state, not the holding of a position. “Becoming patterns” in the literal tier; “become patterns” in smooth registers. Never “be examples,” which erases both the verb and the die.

The genitive τοῦ ποιμνίου is of reference or advantage — a pattern for the flock, in the flock’s sight and for its shaping — not partitive or possessive.

The present middle participle γινόμενοι is coincident with the governing imperative ποιμάνατε: the shepherding is done by becoming. Present aspect is durative — a becoming underway, not achieved. This matches Phil 3:17 (γίνεσθε συμμιμηταί) and Gal 4:12 (γίνεσθε ὡς ἐγώ), where the corpus already excludes “be” as a rendering.

The theological point is not decorative. An elder who is a pattern has arrived; an elder who is becoming one is still under formation by the same Chief Shepherd who will appear in v. 4. The tense keeps the office inside the discipleship it commands.

ποίμνιον is the diminutive-in-form of ποίμνη, but the diminutive force is spent by the Koine period and it means simply “flock.” LXX usage covers literal flocks and, in the prophets, Israel under YHWH’s shepherding (Jer 13:17; Zech 10:3; Ezek 34 uses the cognate πρόβατα). NT occurrences cluster in leadership contexts: Luke 12:32 (τὸ μικρὸν ποίμνιον); Acts 20:28-29 (Paul to the Ephesian elders — προσέχετε … παντὶ τῷ ποιμνίῳ, with ἐπισκόπους in the same breath); and 1 Pet 5:2-3.

The Acts 20 parallel is close enough to be worth noting for its own sake: shepherd-verb, ἐπίσκοπος-language, flock-noun, and a warning about predation, all in one address to elders. Whether the two passages depend on a common early formulary or independently on Ezek 34 is not determinable.

Retain “flock.” The metaphor is live (§8) — vv. 2-4 sustain it through ποιμάνατε, ποίμνιον, and ἀρχιποίμην — and “congregation,” “community,” or “people” would discard the image on which the whole paragraph, and its Ezekiel and John 10 background, depends.

The verse is stable in substance; the variation is in small connectives and inflections, and NA28 records no ranked variant that affects sense.

μηδʼ / μηδέ. The elided form before ὡς is normal Koine orthography and carries no weight. Some witnesses read the unelided μηδέ; a few substitute μή.

τύποι / τύπος. A scattered minority reads the singular τύπον or τύπος, almost certainly assimilation toward the more familiar Pauline singular (Phil 3:17; 1 Tim 4:12; Titus 2:7). The plural is both better attested and the harder reading, since it produces the slightly awkward plural-dies/singular-flock construction discussed above.

γινόμενοι / γενόμενοι. Present and aorist participles are confused freely in the manuscripts by phonetic similarity. The present is read by the primary witnesses and is exegetically the harder and more pointed form; the aorist would flatten an ongoing becoming into a completed one.

Vulgate: neque ut dominantes in cleris sed forma facti gregis ex animo. Three observations. Dominantes renders κατακυριεύοντες without the excess-marking prefix, so the Latin reads more like a general prohibition of ruling than a prohibition of domineering. In cleris transliterates the Greek noun and is the channel through which the word became “clergy” in the West — Jerome’s Latin is neutral, but its later reading was not. And forma facti is a good guide: forma is the mould, not the countable exemplum, which is what the corpus policy on τύπος preserves.

Peshitta renders the negative member with a verb of forceful mastery and the positive with a term for pattern or likeness, keeping the antithesis intact; it does not resolve the κλῆροι question, using a word for the portions or lots assigned.

Patristic reading. Chrysostom and the Greek commentators consistently take the verse as a warning against ἀρχή and τυραννίς in the pastorate, aligning it with Mark 10:42-45; the point they press is that the church’s leaders receive authority in a mode contrary to that of the ἄρχοντες τῶν ἐθνῶν. Notably, the Greek Fathers do not read τῶν κλήρων as the ordained order — the technical clerus sense develops in the Latin West and is later than the text. That patristic silence is itself evidence against construal (c) above.

Proposed — pending reviewRobert Weber and Roger Gryson, eds., Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, 5th ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007

The verse locates ecclesial authority by naming the one thing it cannot be. κατακυριεύω is a κύριος-word, and there is exactly one κύριος in view in this letter (1:3; 2:3; 3:15). Elders shepherd a flock that is τοῦ θεοῦ (v. 2) under an ἀρχιποίμην who has not yet appeared (v. 4). The prohibition is therefore not a counsel of humility about style; it is a statement about ownership. To lord it over the allotments is to act as though the portion were one’s own.

The positive member is the harder command. A τύπος does its work by being struck into shape and then reproducing that shape. Peter’s ordering — becoming, not being — puts the elder inside the same process as the flock: he is being formed by the Chief Shepherd and is, in that condition, the mould through which the flock is formed. Authority is exercised by exemplarity, which is to say by exposure.

The corpus link worth holding in view is the letter’s own christological grounding: the elders’ warrant against domineering is not an egalitarian principle but 2:21-25, where the shepherd is the one who suffered and left a ὑπογραμμός — a copy-line to be traced. The vocabulary differs; the logic is the same.

Proposed — pending reviewKaren H. Jobes, 1 Peter, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005