2 Corinthians 5:4 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

By tarbenacle, he meaneth (as he had before expounded it) the earthly house of our body. Do groan; both a groaning of grief, and also of desire. Being burdened; either with the body of flesh; or with sin, the body of death, Romans 7:24; or with the load of trials and afflictions. Not that we would be unclothed, that is, die, be unclothed of our flesh, (nature abhorreth death, and flieth from it), but clothed upon; which is expounded, 1 Corinthians 15:54, our corruptible having put on incorruption, and our mortal having put on immortality. And this confirmeth what was observed before, that the apostles had some persuasion, (though not from any Divine revelation of that hour), that the resurrection, and day of judgment, would be before the determination of that age and generation; that so we might come into the possession of eternal life (for that the apostle meaneth by mortality being swallowed up of life). Death is not desirable for its own sake, but upon the account of that immortal life into which it leadeth the souls of believers; nor (as was said before) doth the apostle here directly desire death, (which is that which in this verse he calleth unclothing), but rather the change mentioned 1 Corinthians 15:52, which he here calleth a clothing upon.