Peter’s readers were largely Gentiles; 1 Peter 4:3 does not describe the normal Jewish manner of living. In Greek culture the term “ransom” was used to describe how a slave could be set free. A slave could obtain release from his slavery (being the property of another and so at his beck and call) by depositing money in the temple of a deity. (The challenge, of course, was to source that money.) The slave would be free from his former master but then become the property of the god worshipped in the temple where he deposited his gold or silver. In Scripture, however, the term was used not of a slave providing his own ransom, but primarily of God graciously setting his people free from slavery (Exodus 6:6; Exodus 15:13; Deuteronomy 7:8). So Jesus himself used the term to describe the nature of his work: “The Son of Man came…to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The unmentioned implication is that the “many” were slaves to sin and darkness (Romans 6:17; Colossians 1:13). In the present text, Peter uses the word very much in step with Jesus’ use of the word. Presumably, he (and the other apostles) also used the term in his preaching in the same way Jesus used it. That will also be how Peter’s current readers once heard it in the preaching they received. So when they read the term in the present text, they will have understood it in terms of its Old Testament roots and Jesus’ use of it (and not as Greek society used it).
18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,