1 Corinthians 2:9

“but as it is written: things which the eye hath not seen, and which the ear hath not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”

The grammatical connection of this verse has been variously understood. Erasmus, Estius, Meyer (last ed.), Heinrici, Edwards make ἅ, things which, the object of λαλοῦμεν, we speak, 1 Corinthians 2:7, and consequently in apposition to the wisdom of God. But this relation is grammatically forced and logically inadmissible: the apostle does not mean to point out what he speaks among the perfect, but to prove the nature of that wisdom to be sublime and inaccessible to man. Hofmann thinks we should begin a new sentence with 1 Corinthians 2:9; the verb on which the ἅ depends would then be ἀπεκάλυψεν, He revealed, 1 Corinthians 2:10: “What eye hath not seen...God hath revealed to us...” The δέ of 1 Corinthians 2:10 would not be absolutely opposed to this explanation (see on 1 Corinthians 1:23). But the καθὼς γέγραπται, as it is written, would be strangely placed at the beginning of this subordinate sentence. And then, instead of beginning 1 Corinthians 2:10 with ἡμῖν δέ, but unto us, the apostle ought rather to have written ἀπεκάλυψεν δὲ ἡμῖν ὁ θεός; for the antithesis between the idea of keeping concealed and that of revealing would alone account for the δέ placed at the beginning of the principal sentence. De Wette and Osiander prefer to hold an anacolouthon; the phrase, “things which no eye hath seen,” is thrown in, they say, as a description which remains grammatically suspended, “being lost,” as de Wette says, “in a mysterious remoteness.” It seems to us more natural simply to understand the notion of the verb to be in this sense: “It is indeed this very wisdom which is described in the words: Things which the eye hath not seen, etc.”

The ἀλλά, but, signifies, “But it could not be otherwise, for Scripture had spoken in these terms.” It is difficult to know to what passage of our holy books this quotation refers. Nowhere in the Old Testament are these words literally found. Chrysostom and Theophylact did not know whether they belonged to a prophecy now lost, or if they were taken from Isaiah 52:15: “They to whom it had not been told shall see, and they who had not heard it shall understand.” Origen thought they were taken from an apocryphal writing entitled the Apocalypse of Elias. But nowhere do we find the apostle making similar quotations from uncanonical books, and it cannot be supposed that he would have applied to such books the formula as it is written, which would evidently imply the idea of Divine authority. Meyer acknowledges this; only he holds that, by a slip of memory, the apostle, while quoting this apocryphal book, thought he was quoting Isaiah; so also Weiss (Bibl. Theol., p. 274). I cannot see the necessity of so strange a supposition. Jerome already pointed out the true source of this quotation: it is the passage Isaiah 64:4 combined with Isaiah 65:17: “Men have not heard nor perceived, neither hath the eye seen a God beside Thee which worketh for him that waiteth for Him...”; and, “The former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” Clement of Rome, who, in chap. xxxiv. of his Epistle to the Corinthians, quotes this passage from Paul (with the combination of the two sayings of Isaiah), so well understands it is from the book of this prophet that Paul draws, that he substitutes for the last words of our verse: τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτόν, for them that love Him, the exact expression of Isaiah (in the LXX.: τοῖς ὑπομενοῦσιν αὐτόν, for them that wait for Him. Similar combinations of several prophetic quotations are not rare in Paul's writings; comp. Romans 9:33, where are united Isaiah 28:16; Isaiah 8:14; and Romans 11:26-27, where Isaiah 59:20; Isaiah 27:9 are blended in one). In the first passage, the prophet, speaking of the work which God will accomplish in favour of His exiled people when He will restore them, says to God: “We can wait until such a God as Thou, like whom is no other, do for us things which surpass all that has been seen and told until now, and all that can be imagined.” Or indeed we may suppose that Isaiah transfers himself to the time when all will be accomplished, and that he means: “Never will there have been seen or heard or imagined such things as those which Thou shalt have done for us.” No doubt the expression, come into the mind of man, taken from Isaiah 65:17, refers in the context to the memory of things already accomplished, but accomplished merely in prophetic intuition. By combining the three terms seeing, hearing, and entering into the heart, the apostle wishes to designate the three means of natural knowledge: sight, or immediate experience; hearing, or knowledge by way of tradition; finally, the inspirations of the heart, the discoveries of the understanding proper. By none of these means can man reach the conception of the blessings which God has destined for him. From Irenaeus to Meyer, a host of commentators have applied the ἅ, things which, in Paul's sense, to the felicities and glories of heaven. But we have seen, 1 Corinthians 2:6 a, that the Divine wisdom of which Paul speaks embraces the kingdom of God in its present form; and the words of 1 Corinthians 2:12: “That we might know the things that are freely given to us of God,” clearly show that Paul is thinking of the knowledge the believer receives of all the riches of the Divine plans toward him and toward the Church, of what he himself calls, Ephesians 3:18, “their breadth and length, and depth and height.” The blessings to come are of course comprehended in such phrases.

The reading ὅσα of A B C has been admitted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and rightly, as it seems to me, for there is somewhat of enthusiasm in the saying: “those great things which God has prepared.” For the will do, ποιήσει (LXX.), Paul substitutes the word ἡτοίμασεν, has prepared, used also by Clement. The idea is the same, for what God will do in the future is precisely what He has prepared in the past. The term ἑτοιμάζειν, to prepare, recalls the words of Jesus: “the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34), Instead of τοῖς ὑπομενοῦσιν αὐτόν, “for them that wait for Him with perseverance,” the apostle substitutes τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτόν, for them that love Him. This change arises from the fact that the Christian now enjoys the salvation which the Israelite was still waiting for, and is grateful for it to its Author. Thus is exhausted the development of the idea of wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:6 a).