1 Corinthians 7:37

“Nevertheless, he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his own heart that he will keep his virgin, doeth well.”

This long sentence, loaded with incidental propositions, fully represents all the turnings which the father's original wish will have to take in order to reach at length a definite conclusion. This whole domestic drama has for its point of departure a firm conviction, already formed in the father's mind, that celibacy is preferable to marriage for his child; ἕστηκεν ἑδραῖος, he has become and remains firm. The participle μὴ ἔχων ἀνάγκην, not underlying constraint, qualifies the finite verb ἕστηκεν; it therefore signifies, the father has become and remains firm because there is nothing to hamper his liberty, neither the fear of opinion nor the character and indomitable will of the virgin, nor too ardent a wish on the part of the mother. The second finite verb ἔχει is not parallel to the μὴ ἔχειν; the construction, which has nothing irregular, gives it as its subject simply the ὅς, the subject of the first verb. After measuring himself with all the difficulties of the situation, and finding none of them insurmountable, the father remains master of his own deliberate will, and may thus here is the third verb at length take the final resolution henceforth to refuse every offer for his daughter. These long circumlocutions do not at all suppose in him an arbitrary will which takes account of nothing but itself. On the contrary, they imply the fact that before taking the final decision, everything has been heard, examined, weighed.

The art. τοῦ before τηρεῖν is omitted in the Alex. reading. It presents a difficulty, which speaks in favour of its authenticity, as Meyer acknowledges. For the rest, if we take the word τηρεῖν, to keep, in its true sense, the difficulty vanishes, and the τοῦ, which expresses an aim, finds an explanation. In fact, the verb to keep does not signify, to maintain his daughter as a virgin (making παρθένον an attribute), but to keep her for the end to which she is consecrated (the service of Christ). Hence it follows that the act τηρεῖν is not an explanatory apposition to τοῦτο, this, which was clear enough of itself, but a definition of the end: “and who has decided this in his heart (not to marry his daughter), with a view to keeping her.”

The words τὴν ἑαυτοῦ παρθένον, literally, “ the virgin belonging to himself,” the object of τηρεῖν (see 1 Corinthians 7:36), express the feeling of solicitude which guides this father: “the cherished being who has been providentially confided to him.”

The principal sentence, which consists of only two words, contrasts by its brevity with the whole series of parentheses which have preceded. It is the simple fact in which all the anterior deliberations issue. Must we read with the Alex. ποιήσει, will do, or, with the other Mjj. and the two ancient versions, Itala and Peschito, ποιεῖ, doeth? Meyer himself abandons the Alex. reading, and rightly. The present agrees better with the parallel term οὐχ ἁμαρτάνει, sinneth not, of 1 Corinthians 7:36. The future has probably been imported here from the following verse, where it has rather fewer authorities against it and more internal probability.

The apostle closes this discussion by the brief and striking summing up of his view: