Romans 7:2

f. An illustration of the principle. It is the only illustration in which death liberates a person who yet remains alive and can enter into new relations. Of course there is an inexactness, for in the argument the Christian is freed by his own death, and in the illustration the wife is freed by the husband's death; but we must discount that. Paul required an illustration in which both death and a new life appeared. κατήργηται ἀπό : cf. Romans 7:6; Galatians 5:4 : she is once for all discharged (or as R.V. in Gal. “severed”) from the law of the husband: for the genitive τοῦ ἀνδρός, see Winer, 235. χρηματίσει = she shall be publicly designated: cf. Acts 11:26. τοῦ μὴ εἶναι αὐτὴν μοιχαλίδα κ. τ. λ.: grammatically this may either mean (1) that she may not be an adulteress, though married to another man; or (2) so that she is not, etc. Meyer prefers the first; and it may be argued that in this place, at all events, the idea of forming another connection is essential: cf. εἰς τὸ γενέσθαι ὑμᾶς ἑτέρῳ, Romans 7:4 (Gifford); but it is difficult to conceive of innocent remarriage as being formally the purpose of the law in question, and the second meaning is therefore to be preferred. Cf. Burton, Moods and Tenses, § 398.