1 Corinthians 7:39,40

The Second Marriage of Women

39. The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth Cf. Romans 7:2.

if her husband be dead Literally, if her husband sleep, or rather, perhaps, be laid to sleep, the word generally used of the death of Christians, and even of the saints of the old covenant. See St Matthew 27:52; St John 11:11; Acts 7:60; Acts 13:36. St Paul uses it in ch. 1 Corinthians 11:30 and ch. 1 Corinthians 15:6; 1 Corinthians 15:18; 1Co 15:20; 1 Corinthians 15:51, and in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15. The same idea is found in St Matthew 9:24, and in the parallel passages in St Mark and St Luke, but the word employed in the Greek is different. The writers of the Old Testament also described death thus, as, for instance, in Deuteronomy 31:16; 1 Kings 2:10; Daniel 12:2. Thus death is robbed of half its terrors. It is a condition of partially, not wholly, suspended consciousness; a waiting of the soul, in union with its Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:14) until the great awakening. Calvin remarks that to infer from this passage that the soul, separated from the body, was without sense or intelligence, would be to say that it was without life. See 2 Corinthians 12:2.

only in the Lord Cf. 2 Corinthians 6:14. The marriage of widows was discountenanced, but not forbidden. Under certain circumstances it was even enjoined. See 1 Timothy 5:9; 1 Timothy 5:11; 1 Timothy 5:14. But under all circumstances mixed marriages were to be avoided.