It is reported commonly— Whoever reads attentively 2 Corinthians 1:20.—ii. 11 will easily perceive that the last verse of the preceding chapter is an introduction to the just act of discipline which St. Paul was going to exercise among them, though absent, as if he had been present; and therefore that verse ought properly to begin the present chapter. The writers of the New Testament seem to use the Greek word πορνεια, which we translate fornication, in the same sense that the Hebrews do צבות, zebut, which we also translate by the same word; though it is certain both these words in Sacred Scripture have a larger sense; for zebut among the Hebrews, signified uncleanness, or any flagitious scandalous crime. That the intermarrying of a son-in-law and a mother-in-law was not prohibited by the laws of the Roman empire, may be seen in Tully; but yet it was looked on as so scandalous and infamous, that it had never any countenance from practice. Tully's words in his oration, Pro Clutentio, arestrikingly agreeable to the present case, "Nubit genero focrus nullis hospitiis, nullis auctoribus, O scelus incredibile, et praeter hanc unam, in omni vita inauditum!" Dr. Whitby thinks that the scandalous stories which were generally told among the heathensoftheincestuouspracticesoftheprimitiveChristians, had their original from the misrepresentation of the fact mentioned in this verse. So fatal is the allowance of open sin in any church which pleads for experimental religion. See Acts 15:19; Acts 15:41. Locke, Hammond, Whitby, and Grotius de Jure B. et P. lib. 2 : 100: 5.
Related Commentaries of 1 Corinthians 5:1
1 Corinthians 5:1
1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.