Who are the “dead” to whom the gospel was preached?

To this question regarding the identity of the dead to whom the gospel was preached, there is a strand of exegesis that finds the answer in 1 Peter 3:19, that is, the spirits in prison. That, however, cannot be what Peter intends because the spirits in prison are a different group than the dead; the spirits are the fallen angels (see commentary in that verse) while the dead are deceased people. Another strand of exegesis says that the dead refers to people who by nature are spiritually dead but who, in response to hearing the gospel, are (or will be) raised to new life so as to be dead no more. The problem here is that the verb was preached is distinctly in the past tense so as to describe a preaching that is completed at the time when Peter wrote his letter.

The correct understanding of the term the dead links this word to the identical term in the previous verse with its statement that Christ is ready to judge the living and the dead. The fact is that there were those in the churches of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia who had heard the good news of the gospel, left father and mother and brothers and sisters and so on, for the sake of the gospel, were ridiculed for their choice, and died. Those who hurt them will one day give account for their actions. But will these dead brethren receive justice? That’s the question Peter addresses in 1 Peter 4:6: the gospel was preached in the past to those who are today dead so that they might live in the spirit.