Corruption

Corruption, in Scripture, names two linked things: the physical decay that dissolves a human body in death, and the moral ruin that brings a person into bondage to sin. The biblical writers use one family of words for both, and the two senses are rarely far apart.

In its physical sense, corruption is tied to the ground. Genesis 3:19 gives the sentence spoken to the man — “For you are dust, and you shall return to dust” — and Psalm 104:29 and Ecclesiastes 12:7 describe the same return, breath taken away and dust going back to the earth. Psalm 16:10 prays, “neither will you allow your holy one to see corruption,” where the Hebrew noun shachat can mean either a pit (that is, the grave) or decay; that lexical range is an established fact of the Hebrew language, not a doctrinal preference. The Greek of Acts 2:27 translates the line with diaphthora, “decay,” and Acts 2:31 states the apostolic reading directly — David’s flesh “didn’t see decay,” and neither did the Christ’s, because God raised him. Acts 13:36 draws the contrast in so many words: David “saw decay.” Isaiah 38:17 speaks in the same register, giving thanks for deliverance “from the pit of corruption.”

In its moral sense, corruption is a condition that spreads and enslaves. Galatians 6:8 says that “he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption,” setting that harvest against the Spirit’s harvest of eternal life. 2 Peter 1:4 speaks of “the corruption that is in the world by lust,” and 2 Peter 2:19 calls false teachers “bondservants of corruption,” adding that “a man is brought into bondage by whoever overcomes him.” The Greek word behind these, phthora, carries the sense of decay or ruin, so that moral corruption is pictured both as a rotting and as a slavery. First Corinthians 15:50 places the same word in the resurrection argument: “neither does the perishable inherit imperishable” — the imperishable being what God gives, not what flesh produces.

Christian traditions read these texts with different emphases. One long-standing difference concerns Psalm 16:10: some read it as direct prophecy of the resurrection, others as a royal psalm applied to Christ by way of fulfillment, and Jewish interpretation commonly takes shachat there as “the pit,” the grave itself, rather than bodily decay. Traditions also differ over what is chiefly at stake in being saved from corruption — whether the language in 2 Peter 1:4 is primarily moral pollution to be escaped, or mortality and decay to be healed, with Eastern Orthodox teaching tending to speak of incorruption and participation in the divine nature, and Western teaching often stressing moral renewal and the resurrection of the body. The texts themselves hold the physical and moral senses together; where the weight falls is a matter of confessional reading.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.