Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
So a great many disputes are manufactured from occasions offered by mere words, just as from the shared meanings of terms. For because the apostle has written that 'the mortal may be swallowed up by life' — meaning the flesh — they seize on that word 'swallowing' to mean destruction, specifically the destruction of the flesh, as if we did not also speak of swallowing bile and grief, that is, hiding, covering, and holding them within ourselves. Again, since Scripture also states, 'let this mortal frame be clothed with immortality,' it is shown how the mortal is swallowed up by life: while, clothed with immortality, it is hidden and covered and contained within — not yet consumed and lost. 'So then,' you say, 'death too will be safe, once it has been swallowed up.' No — distinguish the shared meanings of the words according to their senses, and you will understand rightly. Death is one thing, the mortal another; and so death will be swallowed up in one way, the mortal in another. Death cannot receive immortality, but the mortal can. Again, Scripture states that this mortal frame is destined to be clothed with immortality. How then does it receive it? By being swallowed up by life. And how is it swallowed up by life? By being taken in, absorbed, and enclosed within it. Death, on the other hand, is rightly swallowed up into destruction, because it is death itself that does the swallowing in that case. 'Death,' it says, 'swallowed by growing strong' — and so it was swallowed up in its turn, in the contest: 'Death, where is your sting? Death, where is your contest?' Accordingly life too, death's rival, will by that same contest swallow up into salvation what death, by its own contest, had swallowed up into destruction.