Honor or Worship?

The KJV update progresses. I'm done with 1 and 2 Peter and Most of John's letters. I got a little more done on Acts. In 1 Peter 3 I found a verse that should make me welcome at most women's Bible studies around the world. Here's the rough draft of it.

1 Peter 3:7 Likewise, husbands, live together with them according to knowledge, giving honor[Alt. due honor, esteem] to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being joint-heirs of the grace of life; so that your prayers are not cut off[Alt. eradicated, erased].

I'm going to have to take another look at "cut off". After sleeping on it I think that's the too strong meaning of that word. The general sense is the same, though. Not treating the wife right brings answers to prayer to a halt. The weaker meaning is that the answers are paused in place, not actually destroyed. There would be room for repentance. But that's not the fun part that would make me popular in the women's Bible studies.

The word translated as honor has a primary definition that isn't honor. Translating that verse with the primary definition would change it to this:

1Peter 3:7 Likewise, husbands, live together with them according to knowledge, giving worship to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being joint-heirs of the grace of life; so that your prayers are not paused.

If the women at the women's Bible studies ever felt like their husbands should be treating them like a goddess...they almost have a verse to stand on for that. Obviously, that would be a really, really fun translation. But I didn't feel peace about it. ;)

Worship in modern times involves gods and goddesses and God, etc. I'm thinking this is the correct word for the verse, if we used a more classical definition instead. If you go through the various definitions at that site, the meaning of extravagant respect or admiration to someone of esteem isn't bad. Or to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor or devotion. Those definitions link pretty well with the other general meanings for that Greek word such as esteem, due honor, dignity, worth, compliment, etc.

A lot of the update is tedious work, but I keep finding fun nuggets. Imagining the pastors at those stuffy, uptight churches telling the men they need to worship their wives makes me smile.

I had some trouble with the formatting on the post today. For whatever reason Blogger couldn't get the font size right until I copied the text into a word processor, reformatted it and copied it back. This is actually the third post I created trying to fix it. If it looks a little different this week, that's why. Hopefully, it'll be back to normal next week.

Have a great weekend.