1 Corinthians 12:21

personifies again the physical members, in the fashion of 1 Corinthians 12:15 f.: there the inferior disparaged itself as though it were no part of the body at all; here the superior disparages its fellow, affecting independence. “The eye (might wish to say but) cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee! or the head in turn to the feet, I have no need of you!” The eye and head are imagined looking superciliously on their companions; in 1 Corinthians 12:15 f. the ear and foot play the part of discontented rivals. οὐ δύναται a moral and practical impossibility (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:21): at every turn the eye wants the hand, or the head calls on the foot, in order to reach its ends; the keen eye and scheming head of the paralytic what a picture of impotence! The famous Roman fable of the Belly and the Members is recalled by the Apostle's apologue. There is no such thing in the physical, nor in the social, fabric as independence. πάλιν (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:20; 2 Corinthians 10:7; Romans 15:10), vicissim (Hn [1911]), rather than iterum (Vg [1912]) or rursum (Bz [1913]), adduces another instance of the same kind as the former.

[1911] C. F. G. Heinrici's Erklärung der Korintherbriefe (1880), or 1 Korinther in Meyer's krit.-exegetisches Kommentar (1896).

[1912] Latin Vulgate Translation.

[1913] Beza's Nov. Testamentum: Interpretatio et Annotationes (Cantab., 1642).