1 Corinthians 15:55 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

O death, where is thy sting? Which once was full of hellish poison. O grave Αδης, O hades, the receptacle of separate souls; where is thy victory? Thou art now robbed of thy spoils; all thy captives are set at liberty. “The word hades literally signifies the invisible world, or the world where departed spirits, both good and bad, remain till the resurrection, Job 11:8; Psalms 139:9; Isaiah 14:9; and especially Psalms 16:10, Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades. The place where the spirits of the righteous abide, the Jews called paradise; the place where the wicked are shut up they called tartarus, after the Greeks. There many of the fallen angels are said to be imprisoned, 2 Peter 2:4. “In this noble passage the apostle personifies death and the grave, and introduces the righteous after the resurrection, singing a song of victory over both. In this sublime song, death is represented as a terrible monster, having a deadly sting, wherewith it had destroyed the bodies of the whole human race, and the invisible world as an enemy who had imprisoned their spirits. But the sting being torn from death, and the gates of the invisible world set open by Christ, the bodies of the righteous shall rise from the grave, no more liable to be destroyed by death, and their spirits, being brought out of paradise, the place of their abode, shall reanimate their bodies; and the first use of their newly-recovered tongue will be to sing this song, in which they exult over death and hades, as enemies utterly destroyed, and praise God, who hath given them the victory over these deadly foes through Jesus Christ. Milton hath made good use of the apostle's personification of death, book 2. ver. 666.” Macknight.