“The work of each (ἑκάστου resuming the ἕκαστος of 10) will become manifest:” while the Wheat and Tares are in early growth (Matthew 13:24 ff.), they are indistinguishable; one man's work is mixed up with another's “for the Day will disclose (it)”. Ἡ ἡμέρα can only mean Christ's Judgment Day: see parls., esp. 1 Corinthians 1:8; 1 Corinthians 4:3 ff., and notes; also Romans 2:16; Acts 17:31; Matthew 25:19. “The day” suggests (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:2 ff., Romans 13:11 ff.) the hope of daylight upon dark problems of human responsibility. But this searching is figured as the scrutiny of fire, which at once detects and destroys useless matter: ὅτι ἐν πυρὶ ἀποκαλύπτεται, “because it (the Day) is revealed in fire”. For ἀποκαλύπτεται (pr [564], implying certainty, perhaps nearness), see notes on 1Co 1:7, 1 Corinthians 2:10 a supernatural, unprecedented “day,” dawning not like our mild familiar sunrise, but “in” splendour of judgment “fire”: cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:8. This image comes from the O.T. pictures of a Theophany: Daniel 7:9 f., Malachi 4:1; Isaiah 30:27; Isaiah 64:1 ff., etc. καὶ ἑκάστου τὸ ἔργον ὁποῖόν ἐστι κ. τ. λ.: “and each man's work, of what kind it is, the fire will prove it”. The pleonastic αὐτὸ is due to a slight anacoluthon: the sentence begins as though it were to end, “the fire will show ”; φανερώσει is, however, replaced by the stronger δοκιμάσει suitable to πῦρ, and this altered vb [565] requires with it αὐτό, to recall the object τὸ ἔργον. Mr [566] and El [567] attach the pronoun to το πῦρ, “the fire itself,” but with pointless emphasis. Others avoid the pleonasm by construing ἑκάστου τὸ ἔργον at the beginning as a nominativus pendens (“as to each man's work”), resembling that of John 15:2; but the qualification that follows, ὁποῖόν ἐστιν, makes this unlikely: cf. Galatians 2:6, for the interpolated interr [568] clause. δοκιμάζω is to assay (see LXX parls.), suggested by the “gold, silver” above: “ probabit, non purgabit. Hic locus ignem purgatorium non modo non fovet, sed plane extinguit” (Bg [569]). Ἕκαστος, thrice repeated in 1 Corinthians 3:10-13, with solemn individualising emphasis.

[564] present tense.

[565] verb

[566] Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).

[567] C. J. Ellicott's St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians.

[568]nterr. interrogative.

[569] Bengel's Gnomon Novi Testamenti.

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Old Testament