1 Corinthians 15:37-38

“And when thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: 38. but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed a body of its own.”

The καί, and, marks the transition to the second question. The answer to it will be much more developed. The first question implied an inexplicable mystery, and the answer could only be given by means of a not less mysterious analogous fact, borrowed from the life of nature. Here it is otherwise, for the point in question is the nature of the new body, which will result from this unfathomable operation, in contrast to the nature of the present body.

In translating: when thou sowest, we have tried to render more exactly the meaning of the construction used by the apostle than when it is translated: as to what thou sowest. Literally, the meaning is this: “What thou sowest, thou dost not sow it (as being) the body which is to spring up...” This singular form, in which the expression: that body that shall be, is the grammatical apposition of: what thou sowest, is intended to express very forcibly the essential identity of the present and the future body.

The expression bare grain tacitly contrasts the grain stripped of all covering or ornament with that wealth of organs (leaves, calyx, corolla), which forms the beauty of the developed plant. By making use of this expression, the apostle no doubt means to suggest the nakedness of the human body when it is laid in the earth. Holsten applies the term bare [naked] to the soul divested of its body in Hades. But the subject in question is the body, and not the soul. The phrase εἰ τύχοι signifies neither perhaps, nor for example, as some translate, but: if so be, that is to say: according to the kind of grain thou hast in hand, at the time when thou sowest.