1 Corinthians 15:36

Contextual Overview

³⁵ But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have?" ³⁵ But some one will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" ³⁵ But some ma will saye: how aryse ye deed? with what bodyes come they in? ³⁵ But some one will say, "How are the dead raised?" and, "With what kind of body do they come?" ³⁵ But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come back?"Ezekiel 37:3;">[xr] ³⁵ But someone will say, "How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?" ³⁵ But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have?" ³⁵ But some one will say, How are the dead raised? and with what manner of body do they come? ³⁵ But some [man] will say, How are the dead raised? and with what body do they come? ³⁵ But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?"

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

fool: Luke 12:20, Luke 24:25, Romans 1:22, Ephesians 5:15

that: John 12:24

Reciprocal: 2 Chronicles 16:9 - Herein Job 14:8 - die in the ground Hosea 14:7 - revive Luke 11:40 - fools 2 Corinthians 11:29 - and I burn Colossians 2:8 - philosophy Colossians 2:13 - he James 2:20 - O vain

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Thou fool,.... Not transgressing the law of Christ, which makes him that calls his brother a fool in danger of hell fire; for the apostle said not this in anger, and from a malevolent disposition, as that rule supposes, but out of zeal for truth, and to reprove the stupidity and folly of such a bold objector; in opposing the veracity and power of God, in setting up his reason above divine revelation, and in not attending even to natural philosophy itself; in which professing to be wise he might be justly called a fool, and therefore sends him to the husbandman to learn of him how to answer his own queries:

that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die; and which is more especially true of a grain of wheat: our Lord observes the same, :-, and designs by the simile his own death, and resurrection, and the fruit following thereon. This seed being cast into the earth corrupts, rots, and dies, and then is quickened, and rises up in stalk, blade, and ear. Which shows that the dissolution and corruption of the body by death is so far from being an objection to its resurrection, that it is necessary to it, even as the dying and putrifying of the seed, or grain of wheat, is necessary to its quickening and rising up again; and that if God is able to quicken a seed or grain that is rotten and entirely dead, and cause it to rise up in verdure and with much fruit, as he does every year in millions of instances, why should it be thought incredible that God should quicken dead bodies, when the one is as much an instance of his power as the other? The Claromontane exemplar reads, "except it die first"; and so the Vulgate Latin version.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thou fool - Foolish, inconsiderate man! The meaning is, that it was foolish to make this objection, when the same difficulty existed in an undeniable fact which fell under daily observation. A man was a fool to urge that as an objection to religion which must exist in the undeniable and everyday facts which they witnessed. The idea is, “The same difficulty may be started about the growth of grain. Suppose a man who had never seen it, were to be told that it was to be put into the earth; that it was to die; to be decomposed; and that from the decayed kernel there should be seen to start up first a slender, green, and tender spire of grass, and that this was to send up a strong stalk, and was to produce hundreds of similar kernels at some distant period. These facts would be as improbable to him as the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. When he saw the kernel laid in the ground; when he saw it decay; when apparently it was returning to dust, he would ask, How can these be connected with the production of similar grain? Are not all the indications that it will be totally corrupted and destroyed?”

Yet, says Paul, this is connected with the hope of the harvest, and this fact should remove all the objection which is derived from the fact that the body returns to its native dust. The idea is, that there is an analogy, and that the main objection in the one case would lie equally well against the acknowledged and indisputable fact in the other. It is evident, however, that this argument is of a popular character, and is not to be pressed to the quick; nor are we to suppose that the resemblance will be in all respects the same. It is to be used as Paul used it. The objection was, that the body died, and returned to dust, and could not, therefore, rise again. The reply of Paul is, “You may make the same objection to grain that is sown. That dies also. The main body of the kernel decays. In itself there is no prospect that it will spring up. Should it stop here, and had you never seen a grain of wheat grow; had you only seen it in the earth, as you have seen the body in the grave, there would be the same difficulty as to how it would produce other grains, which there is about the resurrection of the body.”

Is not quickened - Does not become alive; does not grow.

Except it die - See the note on John 12:24. The main body of the grain decays that it may become food and nourishment to the tender germ. Perhaps it is implied here also that there was a fitness that people should die in order to obtain the glorious body of the resurrection, in the same way as it is fit that the kernel should die, in order that there may be a new and beautiful harvest.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 36. Thou fool — αφρον. If this be addressed, as it probably is, to the false apostle, there is a peculiar propriety in it; as this man seems to have magnified his own wisdom, and set it up against both God and man; and none but a fool could act so. At the same time, it is folly in any to assert the impossibility of a thing because he cannot comprehend it.

That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die — I have shown the propriety of this simile of the apostle in the note on John 12:24, to which I must refer the reader. A grain of wheat, c., is composed of the body or lobes, and the germ. The latter forms an inconsiderable part of the mass of the grain the body, lobes, or farinaceous part, forms nearly the whole. This body dies-becomes decomposed, and forms a fine earth, from which the germ derives its first nourishment; by the nourishment thus derived the germ is quickened, receives its first vegetable life, and through this means is rendered capable of deriving the rest of its nourishment and support from the grosser earth in which the grain was deposited. Whether the apostle would intimate here that there is a certain germ in the present body, which shall become the seed of the resurrection body, this is not the place to inquire; and on this point I can with pleasure refer to Mr. Drew's work on the "Resurrection of the Human Body;" where this subject, as well as every other subject connected with this momentous question, is considered in a very luminous and cogently argumentative point of view.