35. Women received their dead raised--as the widow of Zarephath
(1Ki 17:17-24).
The Shunammite
(2Ki 4:17-35).
The two oldest manuscripts read. "They received women of aliens by
raising their dead."
1Ki 17:24
shows that the raising of the widow's son by Elijah led her to the
faith, so that he thus took her into fellowship, an alien
though she was. Christ, in
Lu 4:26,
makes especial mention of the fact that Elijah was sent to an alien
from Israel, a woman of Sarepta. Thus Paul may quote this as an
instance of Elijah's faith, that at God's command he went to a Gentile
city of Sidonia (contrary to Jewish prejudices), and there, as the
fruit of faith, not only raised her dead son, but received her
as a convert into the family of God, as Vulgate reads. Still,
English Version may be the right reading.
and--Greek, "but"; in contrast to those raised again to
life.
tortured--"broken on the wheel." Eleazar
(2 Maccabees 6:18, end;
2 Maccabees 19:20,30).
The sufferer was stretched on an instrument like a drumhead and
scourged to death.
not accepting deliverance--when offered to them. So the seven
brothers,
2 Maccabees 7:9, 11, 14, 29, 36;
and Eleazar,
2 Maccabees 6:21, 28, 30,
"Though I might have been delivered from death, I endure these severe
pains, being beaten."
a better resurrection--than that of the women's children "raised
to life again"; or, than the resurrection which their foes could give
them by delivering them from death
(Da 12:2;
Lu 20:35;
Php 3:11).
The fourth of the brethren (referring to
Da 12:2)
said to King Antiochus, "To be put to death by men, is to be chosen to
look onward for the hopes which are of God, to be raised up again by
Him; but for thee there is no resurrection to life." The writer of
Second Maccabees expressly disclaims inspiration, which prevents
our mistaking Paul's allusion here to it as if it sanctioned the
Apocrypha as inspired. In quoting Daniel, he quotes a book claiming
inspiration, and so tacitly sanctions that claim.
JFB.
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