each of you must know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,
That everyone of you should know how to possess his vessel,.... By which may be meant, either a man's wife, or his body, and it is not very easy to determine which, for the Jews call both by this name. Sometimes they call (p) a woman which the gloss says is a "vessel" unfinished. It is reported (q), that when R.
know--by moral self-control. how to possess his vessel--rather as Greek, "how to acquire (get for himself) his own vessel," that is, that each should have his own wife so as to avoid fornication (Th1 4:3; Co1 7:2). The emphatical position of "his own" in the Greek, and the use of "vessel" for wife, in Pe1 3:7, and in common Jewish phraseology, and the correct translation "acquire," all justify this rendering.
Verse 4. That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel. The word vessel here (σκευος) probably refers to the body. When it is so used, it is either because the body is frail and feeble, like an earthen vessel, easily broken , or because it is that which contains the soul, or in which the soul is lodged. Lucret. Lib. iii. 441.