1 Corinthians 16:22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

If any man love not the Lord Jesus In sincerity, but is secretly alienated from him in heart, while he calls himself his servant, preferring some secular interest of his own to that of his Divine Master; if any one be an enemy to Christ's person, offices, doctrines, or commands; let him be Anathema Maranatha Anathema signifies a thing devoted to destruction, and it seems to have been customary with the Jews of that age, when they had pronounced any man anathema, to add the Syriac expression, Maranatha, that is, the Lord cometh; namely, to execute vengeance upon him. See note on Romans 9:3. We may add further here, “Anathema Maranatha, were the words with which the Jews began their greatest excommunications, whereby they not only excluded sinners from their society, but delivered them to the divine Cherem, or Anathema; that is, to eternal perdition. This form they used, because Enoch's prophecy concerning the coming of God to judge and punish the wicked, began with these words, as we learn from Jude, who quotes the first sentence of that prophecy, 1 Corinthians 16:14. Wherefore, since the apostle denounced this curse against the man, who, while he professed subjection to Christ, was secretly alienated from him in his heart, it is as if he had said, Though such a person's wickedness cannot be discovered and punished by the church, yet the Lord, at his coming, will find it out, and punish him with eternal perdition. This terrible curse the apostle wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians, because many of the faction, but especially their leader, had shown great alienation of mind from Christ. And he wrote it with his own hand, to show how serious he was in the denunciation;” and he inserted it between his salutation and solemn benediction, that it might be the more attentively regarded. “Estius says, from his example, and from the anathemas pronounced Galatians 1:8-9, arose the practice of the ancient general councils, of adding to their decisions, or definitions of doctrine, anathemas against them who denied these doctrines.” Be this as it may, let it ever be remembered that professing Christians, who do not sincerely love their Master, lie under the heaviest curse which an apostle could pronounce, or God inflict. Let the unhappy creatures take the alarm, and labour to obtain a more ingenuous temper, ere the Lord, whom they neglect, and against whom they entertain a secret enmity, descend from heaven with unsupportable terror, and pronounce the anathema with his own lips, in circumstances which shall for ever cut off all hope, and all possibility of its being reversed! See Macknight and Doddridge.