1 Corinthians 2:13

1 Corinthians 2:13. Which things we (the apostles) speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit [2] teacheth, combining spiritual things (in their matter) with spiritual (things in their form). So we understand this very difficult clause. While the word we have rendered ‘combining' or ‘connecting,' signifies in its simple form to ‘divide' or ‘separate,' the compound form of it, here used, signifies to ‘combine' or ‘connect' together the separate parts. It has indeed a secondary sense, to ‘compare,' and in 2 Corinthians 10:12 it is twice used in that sense; and guided by this, our translators have so rendered it here “comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” But though good critics think this correct, it seems to us quite unsuitable here. For what is the drift of the apostle's statement? He had said enough in the preceding verses about the things of the Spirit; here he has come to the suitable words for conveying them: “which things we speak not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth.” Then follows our participial clause, which naturally we expect to be but an expansion or varied expression of the same statement, and so to relate both to the things themselves and to the words or forms fitted to express them. These, accordingly, be says, we take care shall correspond with the things they express tying spiritual things to spiritual forms of expression. None have caught the true sense, as we think, better than Calvin, who says: “That the original word here means to adapt, I doubt not. This agrees far better with the context than to compare, as others render it. What he says, then, is that he adapts spiritual things to things that are spiritual adapting the words to the thing.” Beza is equally decided for this sense. And with them agree De Wette, Osiander, and Meyer, of modern interpreters.

[2] The adjective ‘holy' before ‘Spirit' is insufficiently attested here.

Note. That the style as well as the matter of spiritual things should have been divinely provided for, is most noteworthy. What then, we naturally ask, is its character and mould? We see it in the apostle's own style, and in that generally of the New Testament; and this we find to be just that of the ancient oracles, only purified, enriched, and informed with a new and higher life. Thus the things of the Spirit are married indissolubly to a phraseology suited to the things themselves; and what God hath joined together let no man put asunder. There are those who think they can now couch “the things of the Spirit of God” to far better effect by stripping off the husk of the biblical phraseology, as that of a past age, and using those modern forms of speech to which we are accustomed in secular affairs. But those who listen to them find that the things themselves, in their life and efficacy, have to a large extent evaporated in the process, while the biblical language is as music to their ears. Nor should the interesting fact be overlooked, that the first translators of the New Testament into Latin, to whom the style of it seemed as sacred as the thoughts, instead of employing the polished Latinity of the classics, invented a Latinity of their own, which, though to the classic ear barbarous enough, conveyed almost literally the biblical style as well as its thought; and to this peculiar phraseology of theirs our own Authorised Version owes some of its best turns of expression, which English-speaking Christians will do well never to part with.