What, don’t you have houses to eat and to drink in? Or do you despise God’s assembly and put them to shame who don’t have enough? What shall I tell you? Shall I praise you? In this I don’t praise you.
Parallel Translations
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What, don’t you have houses to eat and to drink in? Or do you despise God’s assembly and put them to shame who don’t have enough? What shall I tell you? Shall I praise you? In this I don’t praise you.
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Have ye not houses to eate and to drinke in? Or els despyse ye the congregacion of god and shame them that have not? What shall I saye vnto you? shall I prayse you: In this prayse I you not.
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Haue ye not houses to eate and to drinke in? despise ye the Church of God, and shame them that haue not? what shall I say to you? shall I prayse you in this? I prayse you not.
Cross-references (9)
Passages linked to 1 Corinthians 11:22 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Proverbs 17:5 Whoever mocks the poor reproaches his Maker. He who is glad at calamity shall not be unpunished.
- Acts 20:28 Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood.
- James 2:5-6 Listen, my beloved brothers. Didn’t God choose those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which he promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Don’t the rich oppress you, and personally drag you before the courts?
- 1 Corinthians 10:32 Give no occasion for stumbling, whether to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the assembly of God;
- 1 Timothy 3:15 but if I wait long, that you may know how men ought to behave themselves in God’s house, which is the assembly of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
- 1 Corinthians 11:2 Now I praise you, brothers, that you remember me in all things, and hold firm the traditions, even as I delivered them to you.
- 1 Corinthians 11:17 But in giving you this command, I don’t praise you, that you come together not for the better but for the worse.
- 1 Timothy 3:5 (but how could someone who doesn’t know how to rule one’s own house take care of God’s assembly?)
- 1 Corinthians 15:9 For I am the least of the apostles, who is not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the assembly of God.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (17 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 22. Have ye not houses? From this we see…
22. Have ye not houses? From this we see that the Apostle was utterly dissatisfied with this custom of feasting, even though the abuse formerly mentioned had not existed. For, though it seems allowable for the whole Church to partake at one common table, yet this, on the other hand, is wrong — to convert a sacred assembly to purposes foreign to its nature. We know for what exercises a Church should assemble — to hear doctrine, to pour forth prayers, and sing hymns to God, to observe the sacraments, to make confession of their faith, and to engage in pious observances, and other exercises of piety. If anything else is done there, it is out of place. Every one has his own house appointed him for eating and drinking, and hence that is an unseemly thing in a sacred assembly.
What shall I say to you? Having fitly stated the case, he now calls them to consider, whether they are worthy to be praised, for they could not defend an abuse that was so manifest. He presses them still further, by asking — “What else could I do? Will you say that you are unjustly reproved?” Some manuscripts connect the words in this with the verb that follows — in this way: Shall I praise you? In this I do not praise you The other reading, however, is the more generally received among the Greeks, and it suits better.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain The Apostle thinketh it good to take away the…
The Apostle thinketh it good to take away the love feasts, for their abuse, although they had been a long time, and with commendation used in Churches, and were appointed and instituted by the Apostles.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 22 What? have ye not houses to eat and…
22 What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.
Ver. 22. What, have ye not houses?] Here he abolished their love feasts, for the disorder that happened therein. The Greek Church nevertheless retained them; but the Roman Church laid them down, as Justin Martyr witnesseth.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain What? have ye not houses to eat and to…
What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? Hence evidently appears, that these love feasts were kept in the place where the assembly met for the public worship of God; for the apostle would have them (if they would continue them) kept in their private houses: and he doth not only blame the abuses of these feasts, but the feasts themselves as kept in the place where the church met, or as having in them any pretence to any thing of religion: meet they might, friendly to eat and to drink, but their private houses were the fittest places for that.
Or despise ye the church of God? Or do you despise the place (as some think) where the church of God meeteth, or the people met in that place, by carrying yourselves so disorderly in such a grave assembly; or the poorer part of the church, who, though poorer, are a part of the church, redeemed by the blood of Christ? The next words would incline us to think that the sense; for it followeth,
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and shame them that have not, that is, that have not estates to contribute to such feasts, and so are forced to go away without any due refreshment.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain A twofold sense and interpretation is given of these…
A twofold sense and interpretation is given of these words, Some paraphrase them thus; What! must you make the house of God the place of your feasting? If you be disposed for mirth and jollity, have you not houses wherein you may do it with more privacy, and less offence? Or despise you the church of God? Do you undervalue and thus profane and unhallow the place set apart for God’s worship and service, by converting it into a common banqueting-house? Thus many expound it of the material church; and their opinion is favoured by the antithesis and opposition betwixt church and houses; Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise you the church of God?
Learn, That holy duties, pious and public, are to be performed in the church or house of God.
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Duties pious, but not public, better suit the closet than the church.
Duties public, but not pious, more befit a Guild-hall or Townhouse, than the house of God.
Others by the church of God understand the spiritual church, the poor members of Jesus Christ, and render the words thus; "What, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in, if need be, before you come? Or despise you those poor Christians, who are members of the church of Christ as well as you, and put to shame them that have not what you eat and drink, by excluding them out of your company for their poverty-sake? For since God adopts them into his family, and admits them unto his table, you ought not to exclude them from this feast of charity, which was originally designed for the poor’s relief."
Learn, He that despiseth the poor, despiseth the church of God; yea, despiseth Christ himself; as he that pincheth the little toe paineth the whole body, so the disgracing the poor members of Christ is a despising of the whole church.
In these love-feasts the poor were the most proper, and should have been the most principal guests; but, alas! the rich gorged themselves plentifully, whilst the poor stood and looked on hungry.
Yet observe, lastly, With what lenity and mildness the apostle reproves these great disorders in the church at Corinth: Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. It was the first time he had told them of their faults; therefore he doth it gently, in hope of amendment.
Learn thence, That though ministers must not commend but reprove people, when they do ill, yet they must use mildness, especially at their first reproving of a sin.
Some observe, That God so blessed the mild severity of St. Paul, that the Corinthians, upon the writing of this first epistle, reformed all their abuses: which they gather from hence, because no fault is taxed in the second epistle, which was reproved in the first.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain For I have received of the Lord,.... The apostle…
For I have received of the Lord,.... The apostle observes unto them the rule, use, and end of the Lord's supper; his view in it is, to correct the disorders among them, and to bring them to a strict regard to the rule which had such a divine authority stamped upon it; and to observe to them, that in that supper all equally ate and drank; and that the end of it was not a paschal commemoration, but a remembrance of Christ, and a declaration of his sufferings and death. The divine authority of the Lord's supper is here expressed; it was not only instituted by him as Lord, having all power and authority in and over his churches, to appoint what ordinances he pleases; but the plan and form of administration of it were received from him by the apostle. This was not a device of his, nor an invention of any man's, nor did he receive the account from men, no not from the apostles; but he had it by revelation from Christ, either when he appeared to him at his first conversion, and made him a minister of the Gospel; or when he was caught up into the third heaven, and heard things unspeakable and unutterable:
that which also I delivered unto you; for whatever he received from Christ, whether a doctrine or an ordinance, he faithfully delivered to the churches, from whom he kept back nothing that was profitable, but declared the whole counsel of God unto them: now this he refers the Corinthians to, as a sure rule to go by, and from which they should never swerve; and whatever stands on divine record as received from Christ, and delivered by his apostles, should be the rule of our faith and practice, and such only;
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that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed; or delivered; as he was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God the Father, and as he was by himself, who voluntarily gave himself up into the hands of men, justice and death, for our offences; and so the Arabic version reads it here, "in the night in which he delivered up himself"; as he did in the garden to Judas and his company: it was in the night when he came in search of him with officers, and a band of soldiers, and when he betrayed him and delivered him into their hands; and that same night, a little before, our Lord instituted and celebrated the ordinance of the supper with his disciples. The time is mentioned partly with regard to the passover it followed, which was killed in the evening and ate the same night in commemoration of God's sparing the firstborn of Israel, when at midnight he destroyed all the firstborn of Egypt, and so was a night to be observed in all generations; and because this feast was to be a supper, and therefore it is best to observe it in the evening, or decline of the day. The circumstance of Judas's betraying him is mentioned, not only because it was in the night, and a work of darkness; but being in the same night he instituted the supper, shows the knowledge he had of his death by the means of the betrayer, and his great love to his disciples, his church and people, in appointing such an ordinance in remembrance of him, and his death, when he was just about to leave them:
took bread; from off the table, out of the dish, or from the hands of the master of the house; an emblem of his body, and of his assumption of human nature; of his taking upon him the nature of the seed of Abraham, of that body which his Father prepared for him, in order to its being broken; or that he might in it endure sufferings and death for his people.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Have ye not houses to eat and drink your…
Have ye not houses to eat and drink your common meals in? or do ye despise the church of God - Of which the poor are both the larger and the better part. Do ye act thus in designed contempt of them?
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 22. Have ye not houses to eat and…
Verse 22. Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?] They should have taken their ordinary meal at home, and have come together in the church to celebrate the Lord's Supper.
Despise ye the church of God] Ye render the sacred assembly and the place contemptible by your conduct, and ye show yourselves destitute of that respect which ye owe to the place set apart for Divine worship.
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And shame them that have not?] τους μη εχοντας, Them that are poor; not them who had not victuals at that time, but those who are so poor as to be incapable of furnishing themselves as others had done. See Clarke on Mt 13:12.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain What! - This whole verse is designed to convey…
What! - This whole verse is designed to convey the language of severe rebuke for their having so grossly perverted the design of the Lord’s Supper.
Have ye not houses ... - Do you not know that the church of God is not designed to be a place of feasting and revelry; nor even a place where to partake of your ordinary meals? Can it be, that you will come to the places of public worship, and make them the scenes of feasting and riot? Even on the supposition that there had been no disorder; no revelry; no intemperance; yet on every account it was grossly irregular and disorderly to make the place of public worship a place for a festival entertainment.
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Or despise ye the church of God - The phrase “church of God” Grotius understands of the place. But the word church (ἐκκλησία ekklēsia) is believed not to be used in that sense in the New Testament; and it is not necessary to suppose it here. The sense is, that their conduct was such as if they had held in contempt the whole church of God, in all places, with all their views of the sacredness and purity of the Lord’s supper.
And shame them that have not - Margin, “Are poor.” Something must here be understood in order to make out the sense. Probably it meant something like “possessions, property, conveniences, accomodations.” The connection would make it most natural to understand “houses to eat and drink in;” and the sense then would be, “Do you thus expose to public shame those who have no accommodations at home; who are destitute and poor? You thus reflect publicly upon their poverty and want, while you bring your own provisions and fare sumptuously, and while those who are thus unable to provide for themselves are thus seen to be poor and needy.” It is hard enough, the idea is, to be poor, and to be destitute of a home. But it greatly aggravates the matter to be “publicly treated” in that manner; to be exposed publicly to the contempt which such a situation implies. Their treatment of the poor in this manner would be a public exposing them to shame; and the apostle regarded this as particularly dishonorable, and especially in a Christian church, where all were professedly on an equality.
What shall I say to you? ... - How shall I sufficiently express my surprise at this, and my disapprobation at this course? It cannot be possible that this is right. It is not possible to conceal surprise and amazement that this custom exists, and is tolerated in a Christian church.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain What!--Greek, "For."
What!--Greek, "For."
houses--(compare Co1 11:34) --"at home." That is the place to satiate the appetite, not the assembly of the brethren [ALFORD].
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despise ye the church of God--the congregation mostly composed of the poor, whom "God hath chosen," however ye show contempt for them (Jam 2:5); compare "of God" here, marking the true honor of the Church.
shame them that have not--namely, houses to eat and drink in, and who, therefore, ought to have received their portion at the love-feasts from their wealthier brethren.
I praise you not--resuming the words (Co1 11:17).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 22. Houses—Homes. If you sink the sacred supper to…
22. Houses—Homes. If you sink the sacred supper to a secular rank, let the eating be done in a secular place.
Despise ye—As too proud to eat in common with the commonalty.
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The church of God—Said emphatically to remind them what this despised commonalty truly was.
Have not—Alford explains it, have not houses. But those who have not, is a phrase sometimes in Greek used for the poor. The poor and the rich are the have nots and the have alls.
Praise you not—And so emphatic a withholding of praise was a strong dispraise and rebuke.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 22. have ye not houses to eat and to…
22. have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?] i.e. If all you came together for were to satisfy your own hunger, you might just as well eat and drink at home. But the Lord’s Supper was instituted for a threefold purpose. It was (1) a practice intended to bind Christian people together in mutual love (see Act_2:42-47; Act_4:32-35), (2) it was designed as the solemn commemoration of the great Act of Love whereby Jesus Christ offered Himself upon the Cross for the sins of men (see 1Co_11:26), and (3) it was the means whereby He fed His people with the “spiritual food of His most blessed Body and Blood.” See ch. 1Co_10:15-16.
or despise ye the church of God] Not the material building (see above, 1Co_11:18), but the Church gathered together in it, called out of the world, or called together (the Greek favours the first, the analogy of the Hebrew the latter explanation) to be the habitation of God through the Spirit. To introduce into this the petty jealousies and antipathies of human society was to despise the great and glorious Body, in which God was pleased to dwell.
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and shame them that have not] Not “those who have no houses,” “han noone” Wiclif, but as the margin, them that are poor; qui sont pauvres, De Sacy. The word in the original is rather stronger than shame; it is equivalent to disgrace.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (22) What? have ye not houses . . .?—Better,…
(22) What? have ye not houses . . .?—Better, Surely it is not that you have no houses to eat and drink in? This cannot be the explanation of their conduct, for they have houses in which they can enjoy their proper meals. Hunger and thirst, which can be satisfied at home, therefore, cannot be the explanation of their conduct at the charity-feasts. The only other alternative explanation, therefore, is that they despise an assembly which is the Church of God; and they put to shame those poor members, who, no doubt, were the majority, who have not houses in which to eat and drink, and have come together in this common assembly of Christians to share in the food which the wealthier members ought to contribute.
The shame which a poor man will feel when the rich come to these feasts bringing supplies for their own private use, and not for general distribution, will arise both from the striking contrast which will come out all the more vividly from his poverty being brought into such direct contact with the wealth of the rich, and from the evident dislike of the rich to partake of a common meal with the poor. Thus those assemblies will, through the misconduct of the wealthier Christians, have precisely the opposite result from that which they were intended to accomplish. It will be an assembly in one place, but not to partake of one supper—even that which is dedicated to the Lord. The Apostle asks indignantly whether such conduct can be included in the catalogue (see 1Co_11:17) of those things for which he can praise them, and then in the following verses shows how such conduct cannot be worthy of praise, inasmuch as it is entirely at variance with the solemn and sacred circumstances in which the Lord’s Supper originated.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain To eat and to drink in. The object of…
To eat and to drink in. The object of the agape was something higher than the mere gratification of appetite. Though not a sacrament, it was an accompaniment of the Lord"s Supper, and was itself intended to be a symbolical and sacred meal. Despise ye the Church of God! The congregation of your fellow Christians. Shame; rather, disgrace, or put to shame. Them that have not. It would be natural to supply "houses." But the commentators found it difficult to suppose that any of the Corinthians had not "houses to eat and to drink in." Hence most commentators give to the phrase its classic sense, in which "those who have" means the rich, and "those who have not," the poor. They seem, however, to have forgotten that slaves at any rate could hardly be said to have "houses of their own," and it is certain that not a few of the Corinthian Christians were slaves. I praise you not. As in ver. 17, this is an instance of what is called litotes, a mild expression, suggesting a meaning much stronger than the words themselves. For. He is about to give his reason for thus strongly blaming their irregularities.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 22. What! Have you not houses to eat and…
22. What! Have you not houses to eat and drink in? The practice is rebuked. The place to eat their feasts was at home. Despise ye the church of God? By a selfish feast, where some ate luxuriously, and put to shame others, perhaps the poor, who had nothing.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain 22. “For have you not houses in which to…
22. “For have you not houses in which to eat and drink, or do you look down with contempt on the church of God, and shaming those not having? What do I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I do not praise you.” This is a withering rebuke to the church festivals of our day, setting forth the fact that they are utterly inappropriate in the house of God, because they are even much more extravagant and luxuriant and hilarious than these Corinthian festivals.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain What, have ye not houses to eat and to…
What, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you? In this I praise you not . [Litotes for "I condemn you." The context here makes it evident that the abuses of the Lord's Supper grew out of the Agapæ, or love-feast, which was associated with it. As the feast of the Passover immediately preceded the Lord's Supper, the early church thought it expedient to have a preliminary feast as a substitute for the Passover, thinking that the Lord's Supper would thus have its proper setting. They called this preliminary meal a "love-feast" (Greek, Agapai-- Jud_1:12 ). This Agapæ was a club-feast; i. e., one to which each was supposed to contribute his share. But the factious spirit in Corinth caused the church to eat in different parties and at different times; and may have, to a large degree, caused each to selfishly eat what he himself had brought. Hence, the apostle declares that a feast so devoid of all spirit of communion might just as well be eaten at home. They were mere carnal feasts of appetite and not spiritual feasts of love. Paul does not, however, mention the Agapæ, for, being a human and not a sacred feast, it could not be profaned. But the things which were a disgrace to it became a profanation and a sin when they passed from it into the Lord's Supper. Paul shows his sense of astonishment at the unseemly conduct of the Corinthians by "lively succession of questions." His meaning may be paraphrased thus: "Private feasts should be eaten in your own private houses, or is it possible that you do not own any houses? Surely you do. Why, then, do you meet in a public assembly to eat your private meal? Is it because you despise the church of God, and wish to show your contempt for it by exposing the poverty of those who have no houses (nor anything else), making a parade of your wealth before them, and publishing the fact that you do not consider them fit to eat with you?" The evil spirit of which Paul speaks still exists; but it shows itself to-day by a parade of dress, and not of victuals. From the perverted feast of the Corinthians Paul now turns to show the nature of the true Lord's Supper.]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.