Bare (yupvov). Naked. The mere seed, without the later investiture of stalk and head.
It may chance (ei tuvyor). Lit., of 2 happen to be: ie, whatever grain you may chance to sow.
38. As it hath pleased (cadas 73érAnoev). Lit., even as He willed , at the creation, when He fixed the different types of grain, so that each should permanently assume a form accord- ing to its distinctive type—a body of tts own: that wheat should always be wheat, barley barley, ete. Compare Gen. i. Ii, 12.
39. All flesh is not the same flesh. Still arguing that it is conceivable that the resurrection-body should be organized differently from the earthly body, and in a way which cannot be inferred from the shape of the earthly body. There isa great variety of organization among bodies which we know: it may fairly be inferred that there may be a new and different organization in those which we do not know. Flesh is the
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body of the earthly, living being, including the bodily form, See on Rom. vii. 5, sec. 3.
40. Celestial bodies (cépara érovpdma). Not angels. For the meaning of cwpara bodies is not limited to animate beings (see vv. 37, 88), and “the scoffers who refused to believe in the existence of the future body would hardly have admitted the existence of angelic bodies. To convince them on their own ground, the apostle appeals exclusively to what is seen” (Godet). The sense is, the heavenly bodies, described more specifically in ver. 41.
Bodies terrestrial (cépyata ériyea). Looking back to ver. 39, and grouping men, beasts, birds, fishes under this term. It is to be observed that the apostle makes two general categories —terrestrial and celestial bodies, and shows the distinctions of organization subsisting between the members of each—men, beasts, fishes, birds, and the sun, moon, stars; and that he also shows the distinction between the two categories regarded as wholes. “The glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is different.”
41. Glory (60&a). Lustre; beauty of form and color.
‘* As heaven’s high twins, whereof in Tyrian blue The one revolveth, through his course immense Might love his fellow of the damask hue,
For like and difference.”
the triple whirl Of blue and red and ae worlds that mount
Or float across the tube that Herschel sways, Like pale-rose chaplets, or like sapphire mist, Or hang or droop along the heavenly ways, Like scarves of amethyst.” Jean Ingelow, ‘‘ Honors.”
Herodotus, describing the Median city of Agbatana, says that it is surrounded by seven walls rising in circles, one within the other, and having their battlements of different colors—white, black, scarlet, blue, orange, silver, and gold. These seven
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colors were those employed by the Orientals to denote the seven great heavenly bodies: Saturn black, Jupiter orange, Mars scarlet, the sun gold, Mercury blue, the Moon green or silver, and Venus white. The great temple of Nebuchad- nezzar at Borsippa was built in seven platforms colored in a similar way. See the beautiful description of the Astrologer’s Chamber in Schiller’s ‘“ Wallenstein,” Part I., act ii., se. 4. ‘here is no allusion to the different degrees of glory among the risen saints.
42. So also. Having argued that newness of organization is no argument against its possibility, Paul now shows that the substantial diversity of organism between the earthly and the new man is founded in a diversity of the whole nature in the state before and in the state after the resurrection. Earthly beings are distinguished from the risen as to duration, value, power, and a natural as distinguished from a spiritual body.*
Itis sown. Referring to the interment of the body, as is clear from vv. 36, 37.+
43. Weakness. Compare Homer: “The feeble hands of the dead” (‘‘ Odyssey,” v., 21); and the shade of Agamemnon stretching out his hands to Ulysses, “for no firm force or vigor was in him” (Id., xi., 393). See Isa. xiv. 10.