Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
Knowing (eidotev). Second perfect active participle of oida, causal participle. The appeal is to an elementary Christian belief (Hort), the holiness and justice of God with the added thought of the high cost of redemption (Bigg).
Ye were redeemed (elutrwqhte). First aorist passive indicative of lutrow, old verb from lutron (ransom for life as of a slave, Matthew 20:28), to set free by payment of ransom, abundant examples in the papyri, in N.T. only here, Luke 24:21; Titus 2:14. The ransom is the blood of Christ. Peter here amplifies the language in Isaiah 52:3 f.
Not with corruptible things (ou fqartoiv). Instrumental case neuter plural of the late verbal adjective from fqeirw to destroy or to corrupt, and so perishable, in N.T. here, verse I Peter 1:23; I Corinthians 9:25; I Corinthians 15:53 f.; Romans 1:23. Arguriw h xrusiw (silver or gold) are in explanatory apposition with fqartoiv and so in the same case. Slaves were set free by silver and gold.
From your vain manner of life (ek thv mataiav umwn anastrofhv). "Out of" (ek), and so away from, the pre-Christian anastrofh of verse I Peter 1:15, which was "vain" (mataiav. Cf. Ephesians 4:17-24).
Handed down from your fathers (patroparadotou). This adjective, though predicate in position, is really attributive in idea, like xeiropoihtou in Ephesians 2:11 (Robertson, Grammar, p. 777), like the French idiom. This double compound verbal adjective (pater, para, didwmi), though here alone in N.T., occurs in Diodorus, Dion. Halic, and in several inscriptions (Moulton and Milligan's Vocabulary; Deissmann, Bible Studies, pp. 266f.). The Jews made a wrong use of tradition (Matthew 15:2 ff.), but the reference here seems mainly to Gentiles (I Peter 2:12).
Other Robertson's Word Pictures (NT) entries containing 1 Peter 1:18:
Titus 2:14
1 Peter 1:15
1 Peter 1:19
1 Peter 1:23
1 Peter 2:12
1 Peter 2:21
1 Peter 2:24
1 Peter 3:18
2 Peter 1:9
2 Peter 2:1
Revelation 5:9
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