1 Corinthians 15:51-52

“Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52. in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

The word ἰδού, behold, is a call to attention, and the term μυστήριον, mystery, justifies the call. It here denotes a special point in God's plan, which the apostle could only know by revelation; comp. the ἐν λόγῳ κυρίου, by the word of the Lord, 1 Thessalonians 4:15.

Of the three readings presented by the documents in the second part of 1 Corinthians 15:51, the reading of the Sinaïticus and the Alexandrinus would signify, that “we shall all die until Christ come again, but then we shall not all participate in the glorious resurrection granted to believers.” This idea is absolutely away from the line of the apostle's present thought. It is a mistake to introduce here the distinction between those who are saved and those who are not. Perhaps it is the error made in φορέσωμεν which continues here, as if the matter in question were a practical exhortation. The one thing Paul wishes to explain is what will take place in believers who shall be alive at that time. The same holds of the Western reading in the Cantabrigiensis, and the Itala: “We shall all be raised, but we shall not all be changed.” Paul would thus remind his readers that along with the resurrection of the righteous, there is also that of the wicked, which however will not be a change, that is to say, a glorious transformation. This thought is still more wide of the context than the preceding. Moreover, the two readings and the two ideas are both condemned by 1 Corinthians 15:52; for in this verse it is not the saved and the condemned who are contrasted, but the living transformed and the dead who shall be raised. Hofmann has attempted to make this last reading admissible by connecting the negative οὐ with the first proposition. The meaning would be: “Undoubtedly we shall not all be raised (those who have not passed through death), but we shall all be changed, either by resurrection or by transformation.” But in this case the end of 1 Corinthians 15:52 would be merely a superfluous repetition; then the position of the negative οὐ at the end of the first proposition (πάντες μὲν ἀναστησόμεθα οὐ) is a form without example in the New Testament.

There remains the reading of the T. R., which has on its side the Vaticanus, the Peschito, and the Byz., according to which the apostle says: “We shall not all die, there will be living Christians when the Lord comes again, but we shall all require to be changed: living believers by transformation, the dead by resurrection. For it is impossible to enter into the kingdom of glory with this earthly body, composed of materials subject to corruption” (1 Corinthians 15:50). This idea is obviously connected in the closest possible way with that of 1 Corinthians 15:50, and leads directly to that of 1 Corinthians 15:52. There is therefore no room for doubt as to the correctness of this reading. Moreover, Reiche has clearly proved that it was the prevailing reading down to Origen, and that variants do not begin to appear till about the end of the 3rd century (see Heinrici). Meyer has raised two difficulties, not to the reading in itself, but to the meaning it gives. According to him: (1) this meaning would have required the negative οὐ to be placed before πάντες, all, and not before the verb; for, strictly speaking, the clause means, not: “Some only shall die, not all,” but: not a single Christian shall die; (2) the verb ἀλλαγησόμεθα, we shall be changed, cannot, according to 1 Corinthians 15:52, contain the two notions of resurrection and transformation; it denotes only the second. Meyer therefore thinks that the meaning is this: “All of us (whether myself, Paul, or the other believers presently alive) shall not have to pass through death; there is not one of us who shall die; but yet we must all be changed (by transformation).” If we are resolved to make Paul guilty of an absurdity, it is enough indeed thus to press the form of the phrase. But it is amply proved that in the New Testament, as in the translation of the LXX., the position of the οὐ is not so rigorously observed as in the classic style, a fact arising from the well-known Hebrew usage of connecting with the person the negative relating to the verb; comp. Romans 3:20. Thus Numbers 23:13, Balak, meaning to say to Balaam: “Thou shalt see part of the Israelites, but thou shalt not see them all,” expresses himself in these terms: μέρος τι ὄψει, πάντας δὲ οὐ μὴ ἴδῃς, which, taken strictly, would mean: “All of them thou shalt not see,” that is to say: Thou shalt see none of them; a sense evidently contrary to Balak's thought. On the other hand, Jos 11:13 and Romans 12:4, which are sometimes quoted, seem to me to prove nothing at all. For the meaning of the verb ἀλλάσσεσθαι, to be changed, see on 1 Corinthians 15:52.

Vv. 52. Paul here describes the change which must infallibly be wrought: he distinguishes the two forms in which it will take place. The two expressions ἄτομος, an indivisible moment, and ῥιπὴ ὀφθαλμοῦ, literally: a movement of the eyelid, denote the suddenness with which the event will happen. Then the apostle indicates the signal by which it will be proclaimed: the last trump. It has been alleged that he had in mind a real trumpet; as if the apostle could have imagined that the sound of a metal instrument could penetrate to the ears of the dead reduced to dust! He thereby understands a Divine signal, the nature of which is incomprehensible, and which he describes by a figure taken from Israelitish usages. It was enjoined on the sons of Aaron, Numbers 10:2-10, to sound the trumpet in order to call the people together, to strike their tents, or to announce the feast. Now the Advent is the time of the most solemn reunion, of the last departure, of the most glorious feast. This signal is called in 1 Thessalonians 4:16: “an archangel's voice, a trump of God.” On Sinai the presence of the Lord and of His angels was manifested by noises similar to the sound of the horn. Jesus Himself made use of the figure of the trumpet to indicate the signal which shall gather together His elect from the four corners of the earth. By calling this trumpet the last, Paul does not refer either to the seven trumpets of Jericho, or to the seven of the Apocalypse, or to the seven which the Rabbins have imagined, and which, according to them, must give the signal for each of the seven phases of the act of resurrection. Neither does the term signify, as has been thought, the trumpet which brings in the last phase of the earthly economy. The term last necessarily supposes trumpets anterior to this. I think the apostle means by it the manifestations of the Divine will given to the beings of the invisible world, and on which depend the decisive crises of the kingdom of God on the earth; comp. Zechariah 9:14. The trumpets of the Apocalypse come under this category, but they do not exhaust it.

The apostle adds σαλπίσει γάρ, for the trumpet shall sound, and it has been thought that he does so to materialize the signal. It has not been perceived that the words are closely connected with what follows, and that they serve to indicate how completely simultaneous shall be the signal with its double effect mentioned in the two following propositions: the resurrection of dead believers and the transformation of believers still in life.

There is no difficulty in taking the word shall be changed here in a more restricted sense than in 1 Corinthians 15:51; for here it is no longer contrasted with sleeping, but with being raised. Resurrection and transformation being the two forms of the renewal of the body, the verb ἀλλαγῆναι, to be changed, may either comprehend both of them, or specially denote the second, when it requires a particular term.

By the pronoun we, the apostle understands all believers who shall be alive at the time of Christ's return, and he ranks himself with them contingently; for as he does not know its precise date, it is natural for him, being among the living, to put himself rather among them than in the other class. To rank himself with the dead would have been to say that the Advent would not happen till after his death, and consequently so far to fix its date. In the parallel passage of Thessalonians (1 Corinthians 4:15) he explains himself more clearly: “We,” says he, “that are alive, are left unto the coming of the Lord.” These last words are remarkable. If they are not altogether superfluous, they must serve to define the preceding expression: “We that live,” in the sense: “Those of us believers that are alive, that remain, not then, but at the time of the Advent.” That Paul was not sure of being one of these appears from 1 Corinthians 15:30-31; then from 1 Corinthians 6:14, where he ranks himself among the raised; and from Philippians 1:20-21; Philippians 2:17, where he speaks of his death as an impending possibility. Paul knew that, but not when, Christ should return; and he also knew that, according to Christ's own precept, every believer should live in the attitude of a servant waiting for his master, and be ever ready to receive him (Luke 12:36). Here we see the servant: nothing could be more in keeping with this direction of the Lord than the position taken by the apostle in our passage.

Thus has been demonstrated the possibility of the resurrection, and, as an appendix and confirmation, the necessity of a transformation even for those who shall not have had to pass through the dissolution of death. Now the apostle places the reader face to face with this great hope in its entirety, and closes his dissertation on the subject by celebrating the hope, uttering, as it were, a discourse in a tongue, with himself for an interpreter.