5 responses to “Husbands If You Don’t Hear Your Wife, God Won’t Hear You”

1. 

   Sharkly

   March 27, 2020 at 6:00 pm

   I believe you misunderstood the verse because of an unfortunately ambiguous translation. The word for “your” which is “hymōn”, ὑμῶν in the Greek, is plural not singular. The husband and wife are to exist in perfect unity with the wife in full subjection to the husband in everything. The threat is that if, through lack of knowledge, you don’t live in unity as heirs together of the grace of God, then your prayers together will be hindered.

   Mathew Henry said it this way over 300 years ago:
   They are heirs together of the grace of life, of all the blessings of this life and another, and therefore should live peaceably and quietly one with another, and, if they do not, their prayers one with another and one for another will be hindered, so that often “you will not pray at all, or, if you do, you will pray with a discomposed ruffled mind, and so without success.”

2. 

   Sharkly

   March 28, 2020 at 2:28 am

   If you are wondering how I knew 1 Peter 3:7, in Greek, it is because it has so often been misused by churchians against men like me, to try to enforce their woman-worth-ship. They tell husbands that if your wife is divorcing you, falsely accusing you, stealing your kids, your money, and your future income, and your prayers for God’s intervention have not stopped it all, then obviously you are the one who is mistreating her, and the proof is that God hasn’t answered your prayers. And they lie that God won’t even hear your prayers until you hearken unto the voice of your wife and follow her instead of continuing to follow what God has laid on your very own heart. It is Satan’s same old plan for getting husbands to follow their wife’s leading, just like Adam hearkened to and followed Eve’s leading and got the whole earth cursed by God. The truth is that the church should be doing church discipline on your wife, to stop her evil from growing worse and spreading to other wives, but they’d rather jut blame a man for her bad behavior and falsely construe all your testing and hardship against you, as evidence of God’s displeasure, thereby enabling their Feminist desire to declare all women sinless, and all men abusers. It works almost every time, if you aren’t already prepared to call them on their clever misuse of this scripture.

   It is your praying together that might get hindered if you don’t understand your wife’s weaknesses and shortcomings, relative to yourself, and honor the great grace that God has shown her, by yourself also showing her the grace of honoring her with your own glory of man, just as God has honored all men with grace and the glory of God, despite men’s greater weaknesses and shortcomings relative to God, than women’s inferiority relative to us men.
   Don’t let churchians twist a verse that states that one must realize that women are weaker vessels who need to be honored as co-recipients of God’s grace, or your collective prayers will be hindered, into something that turns God into the enforcer of their Feminist false teaching, Who won’t listen to any husbands unless they first hearken unto the voices of their gullible wives. God is the Father of patriarchy and it is quite clear in the Greek that He wasn’t making men’s prayers subject to men putting their wives up on a pedestal.

3. 

   Jonadab-the-Rechabite

   March 28, 2020 at 9:41 am

   Piling on….

   Peter is not explicit on the subject of a husband’s knowledge. What he is to know. It is modernity that inserts the wife as the subject, but that was not always how the church understood this verse.

   Many of the older commentators taught that the husband living with knowledge or understanding referred to the husband’s knowledge of God, His design and the nature of sin, not what his wife wants and feels. As the ideals of courtly love and romanticism replaced God’s blueprints for marriage, the knowledge of God’s blueprints was eclipsed for the knowing how to please a woman. Pleasing your wife is now held as equal to pleasing God and knowing your wife a prerequisite for knowing God. The modern romantic understanding of Peter’s phrase to “dwell with them according to knowledge” is unlikely what Peter had in mind. It is more probable that Peter meant that being effective as the spiritual head of wife the husband needed to know God, his word and nature of the sins that ensnare his wife. If he was theological ignorant, He could not wash her and water her with the word. If he didn’t know God’s design for marriage he might accept the matriarchy in his home or witness a 50% divorce rate like the modern church. The likely meaning is not to know what your wife is thinking, but what God thinks. If the husband fails to understand God’s designs and law, it is unlikely he will lead well and both he and his wife will pray ineffectively for they do not know what to pray for or how to ask.

   Caveat: the Hebrew use of “knowing” involves intimate experience. A husband knowing his wife was an idiom for coitus. Peter may have been alluding to husbands having regular sex with their wives because God designed sex for His glory. Married and intentionally celibate may just get the deaf ear from God. In my opinion this sexual knowing idea is unlikely to be Peter’s thoughts in 1 Pe 3:7. However, knowing your wife’s body is no more far fetched than knowing your wife’s thoughts, feels favorite ice cream or whatever else she thinks you need to know.

   The most likely meaning of Peter is knowledge of God and His Word, secondly what areas of his wife’s spiritual growth are most require his attention. This knowledge is helpful to the prayers of both the husband and his wife.

4. 

   biblicalgenderroles

   March 28, 2020 at 3:28 pm

   Sharkly and Jonadab,

   Let me start out by saying I know Jonadab and I have had this conversation before and in the end we respectfully agreed to disagree on the correct interpretation and application of this passage. Sharkly I think you are newer so we have not yet had this conversation on the interpretation and application of 1 Peter 3:7. I am glad you brought it up because I do want my readers to know about the debate on the meaning of this passage and I want them to understand why I believe my interpretation and application is the correct one.

   Also before we get started, I am away of Matthew Henry’s take on it and I respect his work. Just as I respect the writings of Luther, Calvin and Spurgeon. I read many of these men’s works as young man and I have great admiration for these heroes of the faith. However as I grew in my knowledge of the Scriptures I came to realize that all these men were fallible just like me. In fact these great heroes sometimes disagreed with each other on the interpretation and application of the Scriptures. I could be wrong and so could they. The only thing we can do is follow the lead of the Holy Spirit in conjuction with trying to have a good grasp of the Greek and Hebrew languages. But the most important rule for Biblical interpretation is context. Context is king. And there are many Greek words where the meaning completely depends on the context in which they are used.

   For instance, the Greek word Aner can mean just a man, a male human being. And the Greek word Gune can mean just a woman, a female human being. But when these same words are use in the context of marriage they understood to mean husband and wife. Another Greek word, Kurios, which is used in the verse just before the one we are discussing can refer to a master or owner or God himself as it is most often used. It all depends on the context in which it used.

   And finally, before I give the reason for my understanding of this passage, I want to make it clear that I absolutely agree with Jonadab that the courtly love philosphy and modern notions of romantic love have no place in the Scriptures. He knows I believe that, but Sharkly I wanted to make that clear for you. Also I vehemently preach against wife worship on this blog as it is contrary to the Scriptures. Just because your prayers don’t stop your wife from divorcing you does not mean it was you who were the cause of her sin. Nor does it mean God did not hear them because you were not hearing her. I do not believe that at all. A good and righteous man can find himself married to an evil Jezebel. And no matter how he pleads with God regarding his wife, in the end if she will not submit to God, then she will not submit to him.

   In my next comment I will get into why I believe my interpretation and application of 1 Peter 3:7 is the correct one.

5. 

   biblicalgenderroles

   March 29, 2020 at 11:26 pm

   Sharkly,

   I decided to respond with an article addressing your particular concerns and view point on this. You can find it here – 1 Peter 3:7 Why Are a Husband’s Prayers Hindered?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.