A Chosen Race
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 In the past, you were not a people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
Four titles belonging to Israel at Sinai are handed to former pagans without argument, and the purpose attached to them is speech.
Every phrase in verse 9 is quoted or nearly quoted. A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession — the middle two come almost word for word from what was said at Sinai to a nation just brought out of Egypt Exodus 19:5–6, and the outer two from a prophet describing a people formed to declare God's praise Isaiah 43:20–21.
What makes the passage striking is who is receiving them. These readers' former life is described elsewhere in the letter as gentile and as inherited from their fathers 1 Peter 1:18 1 Peter 4:3. The titles are transferred without a defense, a transition, or any acknowledgment that a transfer is taking place.
The purpose clause is worth separating from the titles. They are given this standing in order to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called them — the identity exists to be spoken about. A priesthood in the older arrangement stood between God and the people; this one is pointed outward, at the neighbors of verse 12.
Verse 10 then states the before and after in two clauses of almost brutal economy: once not a people, now God's people; once without mercy, now shown mercy. The letter offers no third term. There is nothing they were in between.
settled What this mark means