1 Corinthians 6:16

justifies the strong expression πόρνης μέλη (1 Corinthians 6:15), implying that the alliance is a kind of incorporation: “Or (if you object to my putting it in this way), do you not know that he who cleaves to the harlot is one body (with her)?” ὁ κολλώμενος (see parls.), qui agglutinatur scorto (Bz [984]), indicates that sexual union constitutes a permanent bond between the parties. What has been done lives, morally, in both; neither is henceforth free of the other. The Divine sentence (uttered prophetically by Adam) which the Ap. quotes to this effect was pronounced upon the first wedded pair, and holds of every such union, whether lawful or unlawful honourably true (1 Corinthians 7:4; Hebrews 13:4), or shamefully. In Ephesians 5:31 the same Scripture is cited at length, where the Ap. is making out the correspondence between wedlock and Christ's union with the Church: in that place the spiritual union is treated as parl [985] to the natural union, where this follows the Divine order; here it stands out as prohibitory to a natural union which violates that order. Here only Paul uses the parenthetical φησίν (“says He,” sc. God) in citing Scripture; it is common in Philo, and in the Ep. of Barnabas. ἔσονται … εἰς (Hebraism) = γενήσονται.

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

[985] parallel.