We meet with this expression but once in the Scripture. (1 Corinthians 16:22) The apostle seems to have borrowed it from the Jews, whose custom was, when they could not find a punishment sufficiently great according to their apprehension of the crime, to devote the offender to the Lord's own punishment, in his own time and way. The apostle, therefore, in allusion to this custom, when speaking of those who love not the Lord Jesus Christ, as if no punishment he could think of would be equal to such horrible ingratitude and impiety, exclaims, Let him be Anathema Maranatha! The want of that love will be to him an everlasting source of bitterness.
See Maranatha.