Five-minute study · Day 30 · 1 Peter 2
1 Peter 2:9
A word worth stopping on: possession περιποίησις peripoiesis
Peter is writing to scattered believers across five Roman provinces in Asia Minor. They are exiles, aliens, displaced people with no political power and no cultural standing. And he reaches back to the oldest covenant language in the Bible to tell them who they are. Royal priesthood. Holy nation. A people for God's own possession. That last phrase, 'his own possession,' translates a Greek word that carries the sound of something purchased at enormous expense. It echoes a Hebrew word God used at Sinai to describe what Israel was to him. Peter is telling displaced nobodies that they are the most expensive thing God owns.
Word study: possession
- Greek
- περιποίησις
- Pronounced
- peripoiesis
- Strong's
- G4047
- Definition
- Something acquired at great cost, a treasured possession obtained through significant effort or expense. From peri (around, thoroughly) and poieo (to make, to acquire).
Peripoiesis is built from peri (intensifier meaning 'thoroughly' or 'around') and poiesis (making, acquisition). The combined force: something acquired with thorough, costly effort. Papyrus documents from the ancient world use related forms for property obtained through purchase, not inheritance. You did not stumble into this. You paid for it.
The Septuagint uses peripoiesis and related terms to translate the Hebrew segullah in Exodus 19:5: 'ye shall be a peculiar treasure (segullah) unto me above all people.' Segullah described the private treasure of a king, the personal vault of jewels and gold that belonged to the monarch alone, distinct from the general treasury of the state. Ecclesiastes 2:8 uses it for the 'treasure of kings.'
Peter fuses these layers. His readers are peripoiesis: God's segullah, the private treasure of the King, acquired at the cost described three verses earlier (1 Peter 2:6-8) and throughout the letter (1 Peter 1:18-19, 'ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold... But with the precious blood of Christ'). The cost of acquisition defines the value of what was acquired.
Historical context · Early 60s AD
Exiles Who Owned Nothing, Owned by the King
Peter addresses his letter to 'the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia' (1 Peter 1:1). These five provinces covered most of modern Turkey. His readers were socially marginal. The letter references suffering, slander, and the threat of persecution. First Peter 4:12 calls their trials a 'fiery ordeal.'
In the Roman social order, identity came from status, citizenship, land, and patron connections. Peter's audience had lost or lacked most of these markers. The word parepidemos, 'exile' or 'resident alien,' which Peter uses in 1:1, described someone who lived in a place without belonging to it. No voting rights. No legal protections of full citizens. Socially invisible.
Into that invisibility, Peter drops Exodus 19:5-6, the covenant language God used at Sinai. Royal priesthood. Holy nation. God's own peripoiesis. Every title the Roman system denied them, God's covenant language supplied. The displacement they felt in the empire was real. The identity they held in the covenant was older, deeper, and backed by a purchase price the empire could not comprehend.
For reflection
Peter wrote to people who felt invisible and told them they were the most valuable thing God owns. Where do you feel invisible right now, unseen by the systems you move through? Read verse 9 aloud and let it answer back.
Peripoiesis means the cost of getting you was high. Let that settle before you move on.
Sources: BDAG Lexicon; Jobes, '1 Peter' (Baker Exegetical Commentary); Elliott, '1 Peter' (Anchor Bible)