<p>5:8 <i>Be sober, be watchful- </i>They were to &ldquo;be watchful&rdquo; (1 Peter 5:8 RV), watching unto prayer as the end approaches (4:7), as Peter had not been watchful in the garden and had earned the Lord&rsquo;s rebuke for going to sleep praying (Mt. 26:40,41). They were to learn from his mistake. Their watchfulness was to be because the devil was prowling around, seeking whom he could desire (5:8). This was exactly the case with Peter: Satan desired to have him, he should have prayed for strength but didn&rsquo;t do so sufficiently (Lk. 22:31). He was warning his brethren that they were in exactly the situation he had been in, a few hours before he went into that fateful High Priest&rsquo;s house.&nbsp;</p><p><i>Your adversary the Devil, like a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour- </i>This fits with Peter's concern that the Jewish Christian exiles are living within a very critical society eager to find fault with them; and the 'devouring' in view would be the fiery trial of the upcoming persecution of Christians by Nero (4:12). Pliny records how Christians were asked to make a threefold denial of Christ (<i>Epistles</i> 10.97). It has been suggested that the account of Peter's threefold denials of Christ has been included in the Gospel records as an encouragement to those whose faith failed them that still there was a way back to restoration with the Lord Jesus, just as there had been for Peter. When Peter encourages his persecuted brethren to resist the &quot;roaring lion&quot; of Roman / Jewish persecution, he is therefore to be seen as writing against a background in which he had actually failed the very test which his brethren were facing. Yet he can therefore even more powerfully encouraged them, because he had also experienced the Lord's restoring grace.</p><p>It&rsquo;s maybe significant that the Septuagint translates &ldquo;going to and fro&rdquo; in Job 1:7 with the word <i>peripatei</i> &ndash; and we find the same word in 1 Pet. 5:8 about the adversary of the early Christians &lsquo;going about&rsquo; seeking them &ndash; a reference to the agents of the Roman and Jewish systems.</p>