Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Peter · About this commentary
Long for the Pure Milk
1 Peter 2:1-3
1 Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking, · WEB
Five things are set down before the appetite can work, and every one of them is a way of damaging other people with words or wanting.
The list in verse 1 is worth reading as a list. Malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind — and what they share is that none is a bodily appetite. Every item is social. Four of the five are done with the tongue or about a neighbor, which fits a letter written to small congregations under outside pressure, where the danger to a besieged group is usually internal.
The image in verse 2 is then unexpectedly gentle. Newborn infants, and a craving for unadulterated milk. The adjective means unmixed, without additives — set directly against the deceit just named, so the milk is honest in the way the discarded behavior was not.
And the purpose is growth into salvation, which the letter has already said is ready and waiting to be revealed 1 Peter 1:5. Growth here is not earning the thing; it is growing toward something already held for them.
Verse 3 attaches a condition that reads more like an appeal to memory: if you have tasted that the Lord is good. The argument for wanting more is that they already know the flavor. It borrows the invitation of a psalm to taste and see Psalms 34:8, and that same psalm supplies a longer quotation later in the letter 1 Peter 3:10–12.
settled What this mark means