Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Peter · About this commentary
After You Have Suffered a Little
1 Peter 5:10-11
10 But may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. · WEB
The letter's closing promise puts four verbs of repair after the suffering rather than instead of it.
The title given to God here gathers the letter's argument: the God of all grace, who called them to his eternal glory in Christ. Calling and destination are stated before anything is asked or promised, which is the order this letter has kept from its first paragraph.
Then the clause that cannot be moved: after you have suffered a little while. The suffering is not removed from the sentence and is not explained. It is bounded — placed inside a duration and set against an eternal glory, the same weighing offered at the start 1 Peter 1:6.
Four verbs follow, and they are worth taking one at a time because they answer different damage. He will restore — the word used of mending nets and setting a bone. Confirm. Strengthen. And establish, which is to set on a foundation. The first is repair, the last is permanence, and the middle two are the work between.
All four are future and all four have God as their subject. Nothing in the list is something the reader does.
Verse 11 closes with a doxology naming dominion, which is the right word to end on. A letter written to people with no power over their circumstances finishes by saying where the power actually sits, and it is not with the neighbors, the masters, the emperor, or the lion of verse 8.
settled What this mark means