Know ye not, brethren The apostle, having shown that justified and regenerated persons are free from the dominion of sin, shows here that they are also free from the yoke of the Mosaic law, it being dead to them, Romans 7:6; and they to it, Romans 7:4: for I speak to them that know the law To the Jews or proselytes chiefly here; that the law The Mosaic dispensation in general, to which you were espoused by Moses; hath dominion over a man Over a Jew married to it, and engaged to observe it; as long as he Rather, as long as it liveth; that is, abideth in force, and no longer. For it would be contrary to the apostle's design, to suppose the sense of this to be as our translation renders it, as long as he, that is, the man in question, liveth; for he professedly endeavours to prove that they had outlived their obligations to the law. But the rendering here proposed is natural, and suits the connection with the following verses, in which the law is represented as their first husband, whose decease left them free to be married to Christ. The law is here spoken of, by a common figure, as a person to which, as to a husband, life and death are ascribed. It is as if he had said, The dominion of the law over particular persons can, at the utmost, last no longer than till it is itself abrogated; for that is, as it were, its death; since the divine authority going along with it was the very life and soul of it. Suppose that to cease, and the letter of the precept becomes but a dead thing, and with respect to its obligations, as if it had never been. But he speaks indifferently of the law being dead to us, or us to it, the sense being the same. For the woman, &c. Just as it is, according to the law itself, with respect to the power of a husband over his wife, who is bound by the law to be subject to her husband so long as he liveth
The law here referred to is not merely that particular branch of the law of Moses which respected marriage, but also and especially the law of marriage promulgated in paradise, Genesis 2:24; whereby our Lord declared marriages were appointed to continue for life, except in the case of adultery, Matthew 19:6. This argument was peculiarly adapted to the Jews, whose connection with God, as their king, was represented by God himself under the idea of a marriage, solemnized with them at Sinai. But if the husband To whom she was bound, be dead, she is loosed
From that law, which gave him a peculiar property in her. So then, if while her husband liveth, γενηται ανδρι ετερω, she become the property of another man, &c. The apostle, says Theodoret, “does not consider here the permission given by the law of Moses to the woman divorced to be married to another, as being taught by Christ not to approve of such divorces; but he seems only to intimate that she had no power to dissolve this bond by putting away her husband, or that this divorce rendered her husband dead in law to her, she being not to return to him again. Deuteronomy 24:4.” Perhaps we ought rather to say, he speaks in the general, not entering exactly into every excepted case that might be imagined. To infer, therefore, hence, as some have done, that adultery is not a sufficient foundation for divorce, is very unreasonable. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law Which bound her to be in subjection, and yield conjugal affection to her husband only; so that she is no more an adulteress Subject to the shame and punishment of one; though she be married, γενομενην ανδοι ετερω, becoming the property of another man; for death, having interposed between them, hath dissolved the former relation. He is dead to her, and she to him.