Or don’t you know, brothers (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long as he lives?
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 1. As long as it liveth; or, as long as he liveth. Challoner.—This seems the literal construction, rather than as long as he, the man, liveth. For Saint Paul here compares the law (which in the Greek is in the masculine gender) to a husband, whom a wife cannot quit, nor be married to another, as long as the husband liveth, without being an adulteress: but if the husband be dead, (as the law of Moses is now dead, and no longer obligatory after the publishing of the new law of Christ) the people that were Jews, and under the Jewish law, are now free from that former husband, to wit, the written law of Moses. Nay, this people also are become dead to the law, (verse 4) because the law itself is dead by the body of Christ, or, as in the Greek, by reason of the body of Christ offered and sacrificed for you, and for all on the cross: so that now you must look upon yourselves as spiritually married to him: which agrees with what follows, that you may belong to another, (in the Greek, to another husband) to Christ, who is risen from the dead, and is now the spouse of your souls. Witham.
The word for “brothers” here and where context allows may also be correctly translated “brothers and sisters” or “siblings.”