For I am jealous over you... — The word is used with the same sense as in the nearly contemporary passage of Galatians 4:17, and the whole passage may be paraphrased thus: “I court your favour with a jealous care, which is not a mere human affection, but after the pattern of that of God.” There is probably an implied contrast between the true jealousy which thus worked in his soul and the false jealousy of which he speaks in the passage just referred to.
For I have espoused you... — The word is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It appears in this sense in the LXX. version of Proverbs 19:14 : “A man’s wife is espoused to him from the Lord.” Strictly speaking, it is used of the act of the father who gives his daughter in marriage; and this, rather than the claim to act as “the friend of the bridegroom” (see Note on John 3:29), is probably the idea here. He claims the office as the “father” of the Corinthian Church (1 Corinthians 4:15). The underlying idea of the comparison is that the Church at large, and every separate portion of it, is as the bride of Christ. On the earlier appearances of this thought, see Notes on Matthew 22:2; Matthew 25:1; John 3:29; and, for its more elaborated forms, on Ephesians 5:25-32; Revelation 19:7-9; Revelation 21:2; Revelation 21:9). What the Apostle now urges is that it is as natural for him to be jealous for the purity of the Church which owes its birth to him, as it is for a father to be jealous over the chastity of the daughter whom he has betrothed as to a kingly bridegroom.