What Does 1 Peter 2:18 Mean in the King James?
Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The command explicitly includes the crooked master: the servant’s submission is not limited to decent treatment.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to a person held in household service: submission is required toward both masters who are good and gentle and those who are crooked. The demand includes “all fear,” so fear remains inside the command rather than being explained away. The presence of a crooked master does not make him gentle or make the servant’s position equal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the softened reading that the command applies only when a master is good: the verse expressly includes the froward one.
THE ROOT
σκολιοῖς
skoliois
GROWS FROM
σκολι-
skoli-
bent, crooked; figuratively, morally distorted or perverse
Under “froward” sits the image of something bent or crooked; the command is not restricted to upright masters. The word describes the character of the authority, not simply a difference in temperament.
ALSO GROWS
skolios: crooked, bent; figuratively, perverse
σκολιός
This is the adjective behind “froward,” preserving the image of crookedness in the verse.
skoliōs: crookedly, obliquely
σκολίως
The adverb keeps the same image of a bent line, showing how the word family carries the idea of distortion.
ὑποτασσόμενοι
hypotassomenoi
GROWS FROM
τάσσω (tassō), with ὑπό (hypo-)
to arrange or set in order; with hypo-, to place under
“subject” in this verse is hypotassomenoi. The verb carries the sense of being placed beneath an ordering authority. Beside “crooked,” it makes the imbalance explicit: the servant is ordered under the master even when that master is not gentle.
ALSO GROWS
tassō: arrange, appoint, set in order
τάσσω
This base verb supplies the sense of an established ordering in the command.
taxis: order, arrangement
τάξις
This related noun makes the ordering sense visible beneath the English word “subject.”
οἰκέται
oiketai
GROWS FROM
οἰκ-
oik-
house, household
The Greek word refers to household servants, including enslaved household workers, rather than an abstract category of anyone with a job. The household root locates the command inside a concrete relation of domestic authority.
ALSO GROWS
oikos: house, household
οἶκος
This is the household at the center of the servant’s designation.
oikia: house, home
οἰκία
This related word keeps the domestic setting in view rather than reducing the verse to workplace hierarchy.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names subjection under crooked authority while also naming the oppression and threats that power can carry.
The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.The next verse names the servant’s condition “suffering wrongfully,” so submission in verse 18 does not make a crooked master good. It keeps the wrong inside the frame of what the text says.
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