suffering instead of rebelling.

Well it had been for the Jews elsewhere if they had been of the same
mind. But near Babylon, just about the time St. Peter wrote his
epistle, the Jews broke out in open rebellion. Two Jewish orphans,
who had been bred as weavers and ran away from a cruel master,
escaped into the marshes, and there became the leaders of a great
band of robbers. They defeated the governor of Babylon in battle;
they went to the court of the heathen king of Persia, and became
great men there. One of them had the other poisoned, and then
committed great crimes, wasted the country of Babylon with fire and
sword, and came to a miserable end, being slaughtered in bed when in
a drunken sleep. Then the Babylonians rose on all the Jews and
massacred them: the survivors fled to the great city of Seleucia,
and mixed themselves up in party riots with the heathens; the
heathens turned on them and slew 50,000 of them; and so, as St. Peter
told them, judgment began at the house of God.

Whether this massacre of the Babylonian Jews happened just before or
just after St. Peter wrote his epistle from Babylon, we cannot tell.
But it is plain, I think, that either this matter or what led to it
was in his mind. It seems most likely that it had happened a little
before, and that he wrote to the Jews in the north-east of Asia
Minor, to warn them against giving way to the same lawless passions
which had brought ruin and misery on the Jews of Babylon.

For they were in great danger of falling into the same misery and
ruin. The Romans expected the Jews to rebel all over the world.
And, as it fell out, they did rebel, and perished in vast numbers
miserably, because they would not take St. Peter's advice; because