1 Peter 5:6-11

“Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

The letter’s closing exhortation binds humility to confidence. The immediately preceding line quotes Proverbs 3:34 in its Greek form on God’s opposition to the proud, and v. 7 draws on Psalm 55:22, where the burden is thrown onto the Lord; so the humbling under God’s hand and the unloading of anxiety are one motion, not two duties. The adversary is then named twice over, diabolos and antidikos, the second a courtroom term for the opposing party in a suit, and he prowls “like a roaring lion”, an image used of enemies at Psalm 22:13 but applied to the devil only here in the New Testament. Against that isolating threat the writer sets the brotherhood throughout the world (v. 9), locating a small suffering congregation in a wider network. The unit ends in doxology, with dominion ascribed to God rather than argued for.

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