Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 6:15

"And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever?" — 2 Corinthians 6:15 (ASV)

What concord hath Christ with Belial?—This passage is remarkable as the only occurrence of the name in the New Testament, all the more so because it does not appear in the Greek version of the Old Testament.

The Hebrew word signifies “vileness” or “worthlessness”; and the “sons of Belial” (1 Samuel 2:12; 1 Samuel 25:17) were therefore the worthless and the vile.

The English version, following the Vulgate, translates the phrase as if Belial were a proper name. This has led to the current belief, as shown in Milton’s poems, that it was the name of a demon or fallen angel, the representative of impurity—

“Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd,
Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself.”—Paradise Lost, i. 490.

“Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,
The sensualest, and, after Asmodai,
The fleshliest incubus.”—Paradise Regained, ii. 204.

Paul’s use of the word seems to imply that some such belief was circulating among the Jews in his time. A strange legend, possibly of Jewish origin (it is attributed to certain necromantici), is found in an obscure and forgotten book (Wierus: Pseudo-Monarchia Dæmonum).

This legend states that Solomon was led by a certain woman to bow before the image of Belial, who is depicted as being worshipped by the Babylonians. However, there is no historical trace of such worship, and Milton seems to have recognised this—

“To him no temple stood
Nor altar smoked.”

But if the name had gathered these associations around it, we can understand Paul’s using it as representing, or, as it were, personifying, the whole system of impure cultus that prevailed in the worship of Aphrodite at Corinth.

With an infidel.—So many later associations have gathered around the word that it is worth reminding the reader that it does not mean, as it commonly means to us, one who has rejected the faith, but simply one who has not yet received it.