The Meaning of 1 Corinthians 15:47 Explained

1 Corinthians 15:47

KJV: The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

YLT: The first man is out of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord out of heaven;

Darby: the first man out of the earth, made of dust; the second man, out of heaven.

ASV: The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is of heaven.

KJV Reverse Interlinear

The first  man  [is] of  the earth,  earthy:  the second  man  [is] the Lord  from  heaven. 

What does 1 Corinthians 15:47 Mean?

Context Summary

1 Corinthians 15:42-58 - Victory Over Sin And Death
Life on the other side will be as real and as earnest as here. We shall not dissolve into thin mist or flit as bodiless ghosts. We shall each be provided with a body like that which our Lord had after, He arose from the dead. It will be a spiritual body, able to go and come at a wish or a thought; a body that will be perfectly adapted to its spiritual world environment. The last Adam, our Lord, will effect this for us. But we must in the meanwhile be content to make the best use of the discipline of mortality, keeping our body pure and sweet as the temple and vehicle of the Holy Spirit until we are born into the next stage of existence. Always the physical before the psychical and the psychical before the spiritual.
What triumph rings through those last four verses! As generations of Christians have stood around the mortal remains of their beloved, they have uttered these words of immortal hope. The trumpet's notes will call those who have died and the saints that are still alive on the earth, into one mighty host of transfigured and redeemed humanity. Oh, happy day! Then we shall be manifested, rewarded, and glorified with Christ. All mysteries solved, all questions answered! Till then let us abound always in the work of the Lord. [source]

Chapter Summary: 1 Corinthians 15

1  By Christ's resurrection,
12  he proves the necessity of our resurrection,
16  against all such as deny the resurrection of the body
21  The fruit,
35  and the manner thereof;
51  and of the resurrection of those who shall be found alive at the last day

Greek Commentary for 1 Corinthians 15:47

Earthly [χοκος]
Late rare word, from χους — chous dust. The second man from heaven (ο δευτερος αντρωπος εχ ουρανου — ho deuteros anthrōpos ex ouranou). Christ had a human (πσυχικον — psuchikon) body, of course, but Paul makes the contrast between the first man in his natural body and the Second Man in his risen body. Paul saw Jesus after his resurrection and he appeared to him “from heaven.” He will come again from heaven. -DIVIDER-
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[source]

Earthy [χοΐ́κός]
Only in this chapter. The kindred noun χοῦς dustappears Mark 6:11; Revelation 18:19. From χέω topour; hence of earth thrown down or heaped up: loose earth. Compare Genesis 2:7, Sept., where the word is used. [source]
From heaven [ἐζ οὐρανοῦ]
Ἑξ outof, marking the origin, as ἐκ γῆς outof the earth. Meyer acutely remarks that “no predicate in this second clause corresponds to the earthy of the first half of the verse, because the material of the glorified body of Christ transcends alike conception and expression.” The phrase includes both the divine origin and the heavenly nature; and its reference, determined by the line of the whole argument, is to the glorified body of Christ - the Lord who shall descend from heaven in His glorified body. See Philemon 3:20, Philemon 3:21. [source]

Reverse Greek Commentary Search for 1 Corinthians 15:47

John 1:46 Come out of Nazareth [ἐκ Ναζαρὲτ εἶναι]
Literally, “be out of;” a characteristic expression of John. See John 3:31; John 4:22; John 7:17, John 7:22; John 8:23; John 15:19; John 18:36, John 18:38, etc. It means more than to come out of: rather to come out of as that which is of; to be identified with something so as to come forth bearing its impress, moral or otherwise. See especially John 3:31: “He that is of the earth is of the earth;” i.e., partakes of its quality. Compare Christ's words to Nicodemus (John 3:6), and 1 Corinthians 15:47. In the Greek order, out of Nazareth stands first in the sentence as expressing the prominent thought in Nathanael's mind, surprise that Jesus should have come from Nazareth, a poor village, even the name of which does not occur in the Old Testament. Contrary to the popular explanation, there is no evidence that Nazareth was worse than other places, beyond the fact of the violence offered to Jesus by its people (Luke 4:28, Luke 4:29), and their obstinate unbelief in Him (Matthew 13:58; Mark 6:6). It was a proverb, however, that no prophet was to come from Galilee (John 7:52). -DIVIDER-
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[source]

2 Corinthians 5:1 Our earthly house of this tabernacle [ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους]
Earthly, not, made of earth, which would be χοΐ́κός as 1 Corinthians 15:47; but upon the earth, terrestrial, as 1 Corinthians 15:40; Philemon 2:10. Tabernacle ( σκῆνος ) tent or hut. In later writers, especially the Platonists, Pythagoreans, and medical authors, used to denote the body. Thus Hippocrates: “A great vein by which the whole body ( σκῆνος ) is nourished.” Some expositors think that Paul uses the word here simply in this sense - the house which is the body. But while Paul does mean the body, he preserves the figurative sense of the word tabernacle; for he never uses this term elsewhere as synonymous with the body. The figure of the tent suits the contrast with the building, and would naturally suggest itself to the tent-maker. The phrase earthly house of the tabernacle expresses a single conception - the dwelling which is, or consists in the tabernacle, the tent-house. The transient character of the body is thus indicated. Compare houses of clay, Job 4:19. See on the kindred words σκήνωμα tabernacle 2 Peter 1:13; and σκηνόω todwell in or to fix a tabernacle, John 1:14. Tabernacle is so habitually associated with a house of worship, and is so often applied to durable structures, that the original sense of a tent is in danger of being lost. It would be better to translate here by tent. The word tabernacle is a diminutive of the Latin taberna a hut or shed, which appears in tavern. Its root is ta, tan, to stretch or spread out. [source]
1 Thessalonians 1:10 From heaven [ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν]
Lit. from the heavens. Comp. 1 Corinthians 15:47; 1 Thessalonians 4:16; 2 Thessalonians 1:7. Paul uses the unclassical plural much oftener than the singular. Although the Hebrew equivalent has no singular, the singular is almost universal in lxx, the plural occurring mostly in the Psalm. Οὐρανός is from a Sanscrit word meaning to cover or encompass. The Hebrew shamayim signifies height, high district, the upper regions. Similarly we have in N.T. ἐν ὑψίστοις inthe highest (places), Matthew 21:9; Luke 2:14: ἐν ὑψηλοῖς inthe high (places), Hebrews 1:3. Paul's usage is evidently colored by the Rabbinical conception of a series of heavens: see 2 Corinthians 12:2; Ephesians 4:10. Some Jewish teachers held that there were seven heavens, others three. The idea of a series of heavens appears in patristic writings, in Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of the celestial hierarchies, and in Dionysius the Areopagite, Through the scholastic theologians it passed into Dante's Paradiso with its nine heavens. The words to await his Son from heaven strike the keynote of this Epistle. [source]

What do the individual words in 1 Corinthians 15:47 mean?

The first man [was] from [the] earth made of dust second from heaven
πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ἐκ γῆς χοϊκός δεύτερος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ

πρῶτος  first 
Parse: Adjective, Nominative Masculine Singular
Root: πρῶτος  
Sense: first in time or place.
ἄνθρωπος  man 
Parse: Noun, Nominative Masculine Singular
Root: ἄνθρωπος  
Sense: a human being, whether male or female.
ἐκ  [was]  from 
Parse: Preposition
Root: ἐκ 
Sense: out of, from, by, away from.
γῆς  [the]  earth 
Parse: Noun, Genitive Feminine Singular
Root: γῆ  
Sense: arable land.
χοϊκός  made  of  dust 
Parse: Adjective, Nominative Masculine Singular
Root: χοϊκός  
Sense: made of earth, earthy.
δεύτερος  second 
Parse: Adjective, Nominative Masculine Singular
Root: δεύτερον 
Sense: the second, the other of two.
οὐρανοῦ  heaven 
Parse: Noun, Genitive Masculine Singular
Root: οὐρανός  
Sense: the vaulted expanse of the sky with all things visible in it.