And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? — Here we see clearly the drift of the Apostle’s thoughts. His mind travels back to the controversy about things sacrificed to idols. Was there not a risk that what he had said about “width” and “expansion” of feeling would be perverted by those who claimed the right to sit at an idol’s feast even in the precincts of the idol’s temple (1 Corinthians 8:10)? Against that perversion he thinks it necessary to enter his protest. And the ground of that protest is that they, collectively and individually (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19), are the temples of God, and that there can be no “agreement” between that temple and one dedicated to an idol. The word translated “agreement” expresses, like the English, a compact or treaty of alliance. In modern phrase, a concordat between the two antagonistic systems was an impossibility.
I will dwell in them, and walk in them. — The citation which follows is, like many others in St. Paul’s writings, a composite one: Leviticus 26:12 giving, “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people;” and Exodus 29:45, “I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God.” The implied premise is that wherever God dwells there is His temple. The word indicates the “sanctuary,” or holiest part of the temple. (See Note on John 2:19.)