1 Corinthians 6:18-20

6:18 Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin a person commits is outside of the body” ¹  – but the immoral person sins against his own body. 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, ²  whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 6:20 For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.

Leviticus 15:31

Summary of Purification Regulations for Bodily Discharges

15:31 “‘Thus you ³  are to set the Israelites apart from their impurity so that they ⁴  do not die in their impurity by defiling my tabernacle which is in their midst.

Leviticus 20:3

20:3 I myself will set my face ⁵  against that man and cut him off from the midst of his people, ⁶  because he has given some of his children to Molech and thereby defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. ⁷ 

Numbers 19:20

19:20 But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that person must be cut off from among the community, because he has polluted the sanctuary of the Lord; the water of purification was not sprinkled on him, so he is unclean.

Psalms 74:3

74:3 Hurry and look ⁸  at the permanent ruins,

and all the damage the enemy has done to the temple! ⁹ 

Psalms 79:1

Psalm 79 ¹⁰ 

A psalm of Asaph.

79:1 O God, foreigners ¹¹  have invaded your chosen land; ¹² 

they have polluted your holy temple

and turned Jerusalem ¹³  into a heap of ruins.

Ezekiel 5:11

5:11 “Therefore, as surely as I live, says the sovereign Lord, because you defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominable practices, I will withdraw; my eye will not pity you, nor will I spare ¹⁴  you.

Ezekiel 7:22

7:22 I will turn my face away from them and they will desecrate my treasured place. ¹⁵  Vandals will enter it and desecrate it. ¹⁶ 

Ezekiel 23:38-39

23:38 Moreover, they have done this to me: In the very same day ¹⁷  they desecrated my sanctuary and profaned my Sabbaths. 23:39 On the same day they slaughtered their sons for their idols, they came to my sanctuary to desecrate it. This is what they have done in the middle of my house.

Zephaniah 3:4

3:4 Her prophets are proud; ¹⁸ 

they are deceitful men.

Her priests defile what is holy; ¹⁹ 

they break God’s laws. ²⁰ 

[6:18]  ¹ sn It is debated whether this is a Corinthian slogan. If it is not, then Paul is essentially arguing that there are two types of sin, nonsexual sins which take place outside the body and sexual sins which are against a person’s very own body. If it is a Corinthian slogan, then it is a slogan used by the Corinthians to justify their immoral behavior. With it they are claiming that anything done in the body or through the body had no moral relevance. A decision here is very difficult, but the latter is to be preferred for two main reasons. (1) This is the most natural understanding of the statement as it is written. To construe it as a statement by Paul requires a substantial clarification in the sense (e.g., “All other sins…” [NIV]). (2) Theologically the former is more difficult: Why would Paul single out sexual sins as more intrinsically related to the body than other sins, such as gluttony or drunkenness? For these reasons, it is more likely that the phrase in quotation marks is indeed a Corinthian slogan which Paul turns against them in the course of his argument, although the decision must be regarded as tentative.

[6:19]  ² tn Grk “the ‘in you’ Holy Spirit.” The position of the prepositional phrase ἐν ὑμῖν (en Jumin, “in you”) between the article and the adjective effectively places the prepositional phrase in first attributive position. Such constructions are generally translated into English as relative clauses.

[15:31]  ³ tn Heb “And you shall.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here (cf. KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV).

[15:31]  ⁴ tn Heb “and they.” Here the Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) indicates a negative purpose (“lest,” so NAB, NASB).

[20:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “And I, I shall give my faces.”

[20:3]  ⁶ sn On the “cut off” penalty see the notes on Lev 7:20 and 17:4.

[20:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “for the sake of defiling my sanctuary and to profane my holy name.”

[74:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “lift up your steps to,” which may mean “run, hurry.”

[74:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “everything [the] enemy has damaged in the holy place.”

[79:1]  ¹⁰ sn Psalm 79. The author laments how the invading nations have destroyed the temple and city of Jerusalem. He asks God to forgive his people and to pour out his vengeance on those who have mistreated them.

[79:1]  ¹¹ tn Or “nations.”

[79:1]  ¹² tn Heb “have come into your inheritance.”

[79:1]  ¹³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[5:11]  ¹⁴ tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.

[7:22]  ¹⁵ sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT “my treasured land”).

[7:22]  ¹⁶ sn Since the pronouns “it” are both feminine, they do not refer to the masculine “my treasured place”; instead they probably refer to Jerusalem or the land, both of which are feminine in Hebrew.

[23:38]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “in that day.”

[3:4]  ¹⁸ sn Applied to prophets, the word פֹּחֲזִים (pokhazim, “proud”) probably refers to their audacity in passing off their own words as genuine prophecies from the Lord (see Jer 23:32).

[3:4]  ¹⁹ tn Or “defile the temple.”

[3:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “they treat violently [the] law.”