Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Written for Our Admonition
1 Corinthians 10:6-13
6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. · WEB
Four wilderness failures are named as warnings written down for later readers, and the passage ends with the most practical promise in the letter.
Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted 1 Corinthians 10:6.
The narratives are treated as deliberately instructive. Four failures follow, and each is matched to something happening in Corinth.
Don't be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play" 1 Corinthians 10:7.
The quotation is from the golden calf Exodus 32:6, and it is chosen because that idolatry was a meal — eating and drinking before an image, which is precisely the practice under discussion 1 Corinthians 8:10. Let's not commit sexual immorality, as some of them committed, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell 1 Corinthians 10:8 recalls Israel at Peor, where feasting at a foreign altar and immorality arrived together Numbers 25:1–9 — the two sins of chapters five through ten, joined in the source story as they were joined in Corinth.
Then let's not test Christ... and perished by the serpents 1 Corinthians 10:9 Numbers 21:5–6, and don't grumble... and perished by the destroyer 1 Corinthians 10:10 Numbers 14:2 Numbers 16:41–49. Both are sins of speech against God's provision, and a church quarrelling over its leaders and its rights 1 Corinthians 1:11 1 Corinthians 6:7 is meant to recognize itself.
Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come 1 Corinthians 10:11.
The verse states why the Old Testament is in a Christian's hands. The events happened, and they were written with later readers in view; the same claim appears where the Scriptures are said to have been written for our instruction and hope Romans 15:4 2 Timothy 3:16. And the ends of the ages have come places the church at the far end of that story, which removes any suggestion that these are the mistakes of a more primitive people.
Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn't fall 1 Corinthians 10:12.
The warning falls exactly where the danger is — on the confident. It is thinking one stands that is named, not standing.
No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it 1 Corinthians 10:13.
And immediately after the sternest sentence comes the kindest. Three assurances: the trial is not unique to them, its measure is limited by God's faithfulness rather than by their strength, and with the temptation — not after it — comes a way out. The purpose named is that you may be able to endure it, which is worth noticing: the escape is the capacity to stand under it, not necessarily its removal.
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