Be Ready for Action
1 Pete 1:13
Have your minds ready for action is literally “gird up the loins of your mind.” To “gird the loin” was an appropriate metaphor for people in the Middle East at that time. These people normally wore long gowns, and when someone prepared for any strenuous activity, he “girded” his robe, that is, he tied his robe securely (by using a belt, for example), to make sure that his robe would not be in the way. The metaphor therefore came to mean “be ready for action.” The area of readiness in this verse is the mind, and the full meaning of the metaphor is therefore to prepare oneself mentally (compare NIV “prepare your minds for action”; SPCL “Think well what you are about to do”; GECL “Keep that goal in mind with strong determination”). A literal translation (for example, NAB, RSV) would produce a very unnatural expression without making the meaning clear.
Have your minds ready for action may be somewhat better expressed in some languages as “prepare your minds for action” or “make your minds ready for action” or simply “be ready in your thinking.”
Arichea, Daniel C., and Eugene Albert Nida. A Handbook on the First Letter from Peter. New York: United Bible Societies, 1980. Print. UBS Handbook Series.
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