Reference: Spirits in Prison
Fausets
1Pe 3:18-19. The argument is, Be not afraid (1Pe 3:14,17) of suffering for well doing even unto death, for death in the flesh leads to life in the spirit as in Christ's case, who was put to death in the flesh but quickened in spirit (i.e. in virtue of His divine nature: Ro 1:3-4; 1Co 15:45; 2Co 13:4) in which (as distinguished from in person) He went in the person of Noah (compare 1Pe 1:11 "a preacher of righteousness" (2Pe 2:5; He went not locally but as Eph 2:17, "He came and preached peace," namely, by His ministers) and preached unto the spirits in prison, namely, the antediluvian unbelievers; their bodies seemed free, but their spirits were in prison (Ps 141:9) and they like "prisoners shut up in the prison" just as the fallen are judicially regarded as in chains of darkness, though for a time at large on the earth (2Pe 2:4; Isa 24:18,22-23; 61:1; Ge 7:11, referred to in Isa 24:18). "His Spirit" long "strove" with them, but ceased to do so because even the seed of the godly Seth proved "flesh" and quenched the Spirit (Ge 6:3).
See Verses Found in Dictionary
And Jehovah will say, My spirit will not forever be low in man, for that he is flesh and his days were one hundred and twenty years.
In the year of six hundred years of Noah's life, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, in the same day all the fountains of the great deep were divided and the sluices of the heavens were opened.
Watch me from the hands of the snare they will lay for me, and the snares of those working iniquity.
And it was he fleeing from the voice of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he coming up out of the midst of the pit, shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from the height were opened, and the foundations of the earth, will tremble.
And it was he fleeing from the voice of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he coming up out of the midst of the pit, shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from the height were opened, and the foundations of the earth, will tremble.
And they gathered a collection of the bound into the dungeon. and they were shut up into a shutting up, and after many days they shall be reviewed. And the moon blushed, and the sun was ashamed, for Jehovah of armies reigned in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and was honored before his old men.
The spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because Jehovah anointed me to announce good news to the afflicted, he sent me to bind up to the broken of heart, to call freedom to the captives, and the opening of the prison to the bound.
Concerning his Son born of the seed of David according to the flesh. Determined the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the rising up of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord:
And having come, he announced good news, peace to you afar off, and to those near.
Searching for whom or what time the Spirit of Christ which in them manifested, testifying beforehand the sufferings to Christ, and the glories after these.
But if ye also suffer for justice, happy are ye: be not afraid of their fear, neither be troubled;
Fur better, doing good, if the will of God will, to suffer, than doing evil. For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just one for the unjust, that he might bring us near to God, truly put to death in the flesh, and made alive by the Spirit: read more. In which also having gone, he proclaimed to the spirits in prison;
For if God spared not the angels having sinned, but delivered up, hurled into Tartarus, to cords of darkness, having been kept for judgment; And spared not the old world, but Noah the eighth, a herald of justice, he watched, having brought an inundation upon the world of the irreligious;