2 Corinthians 6:17

‘Wherefore “Come you out from among them, and be you separate,” says the Lord, “And touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, And you shall be to me sons and daughters,” says the Lord Almighty.'

So in response to His sovereignty and the ratification of the covenant they must come out from the world and be separate, avoiding contact with all that is unclean, that is, in this context, all that is connected with idolatry and the sins connected with it. This may refer to food known to have been offered to idols, or to the temple catamites and prostitutes, or to sexual misbehaviour, or all of these. Jesus, however, went further. He defined unclean in the New Testament sense in these terms, ‘fornication, thefts, murders, adulteries, coveting, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, ranting and raving, pride, foolishness' (Mark 7:22). All such uncleanness must be avoided.

Paul's words are possibly based on Isaiah 52:11, where the command to ‘come out from there, touch no unclean thing' is given but it is not intended to be a direct quotation. It is the idea rather than the actual literal Scripture which he saw as important. God's people must come out to Him from the world and separate themselves to Him leaving behind all that is unclean. Since He takes up His home among us, they in turn (as we are) are called to separate themselves from everything that is incompatible with his holiness. The verbs are aorist imperatives (exelthate, aphoristhete) indicating that immediate and decisive once-for-all separation is called for.

‘Says the Lord.' This is not in the text of Isaiah but is Paul's addition to stress from Whom the command comes.

The pledge is then given that if His people will obey Him, then God will receive them and be a father to them, and they, in turn, will be to Him sons and daughters (2 Corinthians 6:17).

I will receive you is possibly drawn from Ezekiel 20:34 LXX ("I will receive you from the countries where you had been scattered,"). The second part is taken from 2 Samuel 7:14, "I will be his father, and he will be my son." Paul sees God's promise to David, that he will be a father to Solomon, and that Solomon will be a son to him, fulfilled again in God's relationships with His people. But the singular son is here changed to the plural sons, and the phrase ‘and daughters' is added, possibly under the influence of Isaiah 43:6, "Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth". There is to be a family relationship and family affection between God and his people.

This whole string of Old Testament part references concludes with the phrase ‘says the Lord Almighty'. The phrase is a familiar one in the LXX (but unique in Paul). The term pantokrator, which translates the Hebrew seba'ot, is commonly rendered "almighty" but actually means "master of all things" or "ruler of all". With this phrase Paul emphasises the awesome truth that it is the One who rules over all Who chooses to dwell among us and be our Father.

This use of pantokrater suggests that there is a good possibility that this string of loosely bound together extracts from Scripture may have been found by Paul in a record of such quotations, and that he quotes them as he found them, for the references to the Lord sound as though they are part of a quotation. He could not carry his Bible around with him. Such lists are known, for example, from Qumran. But if this be so he puts his stamp of approval on it.