Al,
Have you never heard of an analogy or figure of speech used in the Bible? That's what I used in my statement. That's what Paul also used in 2 Cor 6:14.
Take a read of these Bible teachers:
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
(14) Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.--We seem at first to enter, by an abrupt transition, upon a new line of exhortation. The under-current of thought is, however, not difficult to trace. There was a false latitude as well as a true. The baser party at Corinth might think it a matter of indifference whether they married a heathen or a Christian, whether they chose their intimate friends among the worshippers of Aphrodite or of Christ. Against that "enlargement" the Apostle feels bound to protest. The Greek word for "unequally yoked together" is not found elsewhere, and was probably coined by St. Paul to give expression to his thoughts. Its meaning is, however, determined by the use of the cognate noun in
Leviticus 19:19 ("
Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind").
Cattle were unequally yoked together when ox and ass were drawing the same plough (
Deuteronomy 22:10). Men and women are so when they have no common bond of faith in God. Another explanation refers the image to the yoke of a balance, or pair of scales, and so sees in the precept a warning against partiality in judgment; but this rests on very slender ground, or rather, no ground at all.
Pulpit Commentary
Verse 14. - Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Ewald, followed by Dean Stanley, Holsten, and others, thinks that here there is a sudden dislocation of the argument, and some have even supposed that the section,
2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1, is either an after thought written by the apostle on the margin of the Epistle after it was finished; or even an interpolation. The latter view has arisen from the unusual expressions of the section, and the use of the word "Belial," and the command of Greek shown by the varied expressions. There is no adequate ground for these conjectures. Every writer is conscious of moods in which words come to him more fluently than at other times, and all writers of deep feeling, like St. Paul, abound in sudden transitions which correspond to the lightning-like rapidity of their thoughts. It is doubtful whether the readers would not have seen at once the sequence of thought, which depends on circumstances which we can only conjecture. Probably the alienation from St. Paul had its root in some tampering with unbelievers. Such might at any rate have been the case among the Gentile members of the Church, some of whom were even willing to go to sacrificial feasts in heathen temples (
1 Corinthians 8-10.).
"Unequally yoked" is a metaphor derived from Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:10, and is the opposite of "true yoke fellow" (Philippians 4:3). What fellowship; literally, participation (
Ephesians 5:6-11). Unrighteousness; literally, lawlessness (
1 John 3:4). It was a special mark of heathen life (
Romans 7:19). Light with darkness. This antithesis is specially prominent in
Ephesians 5:9-11 and
Colossians 1:12, 13, and in the writings of St. John (
John 1:5;
John 3:19; 1 John, passim).
And another:
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
14. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers] Dean Stanley observes on the “remarkable dislocation of the argument here.” But the connection of thought is not difficult to trace. The only reward (see last verse) St Paul sought from the Corinthians was conduct in accordance with the Gospel of Christ. This was the best form their sympathy with him could take. Therefore he touches on some of the points on which they were in the habit of doing most violence to their Christian profession. They did not keep sufficiently aloof from unbelievers, but even went so far as to ‘sit at meat’ with them ‘in the idol-temple’ (see 1 Corinthians 8, 10, and notes) and thus become partakers with them in their idolatry, whereby they were the cause of infinite mischief to the souls of their brethren. The reference in the words ‘unequally yoked together’ is to the precept in
Deuteronomy 22:10, a precept, like many similar ones in the same chapter (
2 Corinthians 6:9;
2 Corinthians 6:11-12) and elsewhere in the Mosaic laws,
manifestly figurative in its character. The Apostle’s words must not be confined to intermarriages with the heathen, though of course it includes them in the prohibition. It refers to all kinds of close and intimate relations. “They are yoked together with unbelievers, who enter into close companionship with them.” Estius.
what fellowship] The word thus rendered here is not the same as that rendered communion below, a word which (see notes on
1 Corinthians 1:9;
1 Corinthians 10:16) is itself rendered indifferently by communion and fellowship in the N. T., but is derived from the word signifying to partake (partynge, Wiclif), e.g. in
1 Corinthians 10:17. See
Ephesians 5:7; also
1Ma 1:13-15 and
2 John 1:11.
unrighteousness] Literally, lawlessness, the normal condition of the heathen man,
Romans 6:19, while the Christian is endowed with ‘God’s righteousness,’ ch.
2 Corinthians 5:21.
light with darkness] Cf.
John 1:5;
John 3:19, the one signifying the condition of man in Christ, the other his condition without Christ. See also
Ephesians 5:8;
1 Thessalonians 5:5; and ch.
2 Corinthians 4:4.
These Bible teachers state of 2 Cor 6:14,
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
14. Be not—Greek, "Become not."
unequally yoked—"yoked with one alien in spirit."
The image is from the symbolical precept of the law (Le 19:19), "Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind"; or the precept (De 22:10), "Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together." Compare De 7:3, forbidding marriages with the heathen; also 1 Co 7:39. The believer and unbeliever are utterly heterogeneous. Too close intercourse with unbelievers in other relations also is included (2 Co 6:16; 1 Co 8:10; 10:14).
fellowship—literally, "share," or "participation."
righteousness—the state of the believer, justified by faith.
unrighteousness—rather, as always translated elsewhere, "iniquity"; the state of the unbeliever, the fruit of unbelief.
light—of which believers are the children (1Th 5:5).
Oz