1 Corinthians 5:1,2 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

It is, &c. As if he had said, I have spoken of coming to you with a rod of correction, and it is too probable I maybe laid under a necessity of using it, though it be an unwilling necessity: for it is commonly reported that there is fornication practised among you The original word, πορνεια, implies criminal conversation of any kind whatever; and is used by the LXX., and by the writers of the New Testament, in the latitude which its correspondent word hath in the Hebrew language, namely, to denote all the different kinds of uncleanness committed, whether between men and women, or between men, or with beasts. Accordingly it is used in the plural number, chap. 1 Corinthians 7:2. Here the word signifies incest joined with adultery, the woman's husband being still living, as appears from 2 Corinthians 7:12. In the Old Testament whoredom sometimes signifies idolatry, because the union of the Israelites with God as their king being represented by God himself as a marriage, their giving themselves up to idolatry was considered as adultery. Such fornication as is not named among the Gentiles Degenerate as they are, and abandoned to very vile practices; but is generally much condemned and detested. Accordingly many quotations brought by Whitby and others on this text, show that incest was held in high abomination among the heathen. And an enormity of this kind, as is well known, is called by Cicero, scelus incredibile et inauditum, an incredible and unheard-of wickedness. That one should have Should cohabit with, or should marry, his father's wife His step-mother, and that during his father's life. And ye, notwithstanding, are puffed up Glory in your present condition, (1 Corinthians 4:8; 1 Corinthians 4:10,) and make an ostentation of your spiritual gifts to the neglect of your duty. And have not rather mourned Given evident proofs of sorrow, such as one would have supposed a crime like this should have occasioned to the whole society, throwing every member of it into a state of humiliation and self-abasement; that he who hath done this deed might be taken from among you Might, at that time of solemn mourning, have been expelled from your communion. From the Corinthians tolerating this crime, Macknight infers “that the guilty person was of some note among them; perhaps one of the teachers of the faction, who, being greatly admired for his personal qualifications, had escaped censure by arguing that such marriages were not forbidden by the gospel.” “It is remarkable, that neither here, nor in any of the passages where this affair is spoken of, is the woman mentioned, who was the other party in the crime. Probably she was a heathen, consequently not subject to the discipline of the church.”