to behave disgracefully: to act in a way that violates what is fitting and brings shame in the eyes of others.
This word describes behaving in a way that fails to keep the bearing a person is expected to hold. Its root idea is outward appearance and conduct, the part of a person others can see, so its home is the world of public honor and shame rather than private guilt. To do this is to cut a bad figure, to disgrace oneself in front of others.
Across centuries of Greek writing it covered a wide range, from making a fool of oneself in an argument to a soldier throwing away his shield in cowardice. The Greek Old Testament then gave this word and its relatives a further color: they became a standard way to speak of nakedness and sexual shame, so a reader steeped in those Scriptures could hear that overtone. But the word is not sexual by nature. It takes on that meaning only when the surrounding text supplies it.
Paul uses the word only twice, and he is playing on it throughout his first letter to the Corinthians, setting it against its opposite, behaving decently and in good order. When he says that love does not behave disgracefully, he holds up a mirror to a congregation preoccupied with its own honor. When he uses the same word of a man and the young woman he is pledged to, it does more delicate work, and readers have argued for centuries about exactly what improper behavior he has in mind.
Nuances
In 1 Corinthians 7:36, who the man and the "virgin" are, and therefore what improper conduct is in view.
- majorityA man and the woman he is engaged to: he fears he is treating his fiancee wrongly, either by pressing her sexually or by prolonging the engagement, and Paul frees him to marry. This is the modern majority reading.; Werner Georg Kummel, "Verlobung und Heirat bei Paulus (1 Kor 7,36-38)," in Neutestamentliche Studien fur Rudolf Bultmann (1954); Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (1987); Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (2000); Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, Anchor Yale Bible (2008)
- minorityA father and his unmarried daughter: he fears he brings shame on her by keeping her single past the usual age for marriage. This was the dominant older reading.; John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians; Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1857); Leon Morris, 1 Corinthians, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries; Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians, ICC
- minorityA celibate couple sharing a household in a "spiritual marriage" who feel the strain of the arrangement. This view has few current defenders.; Hans Achelis, Virgines Subintroductae (1902); Kirsopp Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul (1911); James Moffatt, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, Moffatt New Testament Commentary (1938)
How much sexual meaning the verb ascemoneo carries in 1 Corinthians 7:36, given the shame-and-nakedness coloring the word family took on in the Greek Old Testament.
- contestedA strongly sexual sense: the man realizes he cannot keep from acting on his desire for his fiancee, and Paul releases him to marry rather than fail her. This reading gives full weight to the word group's sexual coloring elsewhere in the letter.; Bruce W. Winter, "Puberty or Passion? The Referent of ΥΠΕΡΑΚΜΟΣ in 1 Corinthians 7:36," Tyndale Bulletin 49 (1998); Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth (2001); C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1968); Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians, Sacra Pagina (1999)
- contestedA general sense of impropriety: the man fears failing to honor his fiancee, with no specifically sexual charge, since Paul uses this word family in plainly ethical, non-sexual ways elsewhere.; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (1987); Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (2000); David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, BECNT (2003); Terrance Callan, "Competing Readings of 1 Corinthians 7:36-38," Biblical Theology Bulletin (2016)