Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
Women received their dead raised--as the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:17-24). The Shunammite (2Ki. 4:17-35). The two oldest manuscripts read. "They received women of aliens by raising their dead." 1 Kings 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 Luke 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 (Daniel 12:2; Luke 20:35; Philippians 3:11). The fourth of the brethren (referring to Daniel 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.
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Daniel 11:33
Daniel 12:2
2 Corinthians 4:9
Hebrews 10:34
Hebrews 11:36
Hebrews 13:7
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