11

Adulterers is here used in the spiritual sense of making intimate alliance with another but the One God. ‘One cannot serve both God and Mammon’, for instance.  The soul can only be devoted to one cause.  A soul’s prime concern is thus its god. Maturity is understood in terms of deification (theosis) and in the eternal sense.  For instance, a financial kingdom remains temporal.

This whole piece must also be read in the mystical sense.  The author provides ample warning that s/he is embarking on allegory.  The clues are, among other, the illogical reasoning employed in the literal sense — we know very well that so-called illegitimate children do grow to maturity, that they do rise to fame and glory, that they are counted as acceptable to God.  The author uses the double play on words, while s/he is giving us warning that allegory abounds the foolishness of the prevailing culture is mocked.  Vs 16 says the children will be rooted out and will disappear, vs 17 says that it was not necessarily true and they may live long but they will come to nothing.  In the prevailing Greek culture of the day this statement was as absurd as it is today, while the Jewish culture would have liked to take these sayings literally.