---
title: 1 Corinthians 10:26
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-10-26/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-10-26.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Corinthians 10:26
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Corinthians 10:26

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "for "to Jehovah belong the earth and everything in it.""

## JW Usage

JWs affirm the verse as a statement of Jehovah's ownership of creation. Its context, however, sits awkwardly with Watchtower practice: Paul is telling Corinthian Christians they may eat meat sold in the market without investigating whether it was sacrificed to an idol. The Watchtower's approach to customs with pagan associations runs the other way — origin is treated as decisive, and the safe course is avoidance. This verse is more often cited for its ownership claim than for the permission Paul draws from it.

## Protestant Usage

The argument Paul is making matters as much as the sentence he quotes. A Corinthian believer wants to know whether meat from the market is safe when it may well have passed through a pagan temple. Paul's answer is: eat it, ask no questions, because the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. That is the principle in one line. A thing does not belong to the idol. It belongs to God, and an idolater misusing it does not transfer the title deed. Paul says a few verses earlier that an idol is nothing at all in the world — it has no power to contaminate what God made. This is the verse to reach for when a Witness explains that a day, a tree, a ring or a song is off limits because idolaters once used it. Ask what Paul told the Corinthians to do about meat that had been on a pagan altar days before. The answer is in their own Bible, and it is not avoidance. Compare Psalms 24:1, Acts 17:23.

## NWT Issue

The NWT reads "to Jehovah belong the earth and everything in it," where the Greek of 1 Corinthians has kyriou — "the Lord." Paul is quoting Psalm 24:1, where the Hebrew does have the divine name, so this is the more defensible end of the NWT's practice of substituting "Jehovah" in the New Testament. It is still worth noticing, because the same substitution is applied elsewhere in places where the Greek's "Lord" clearly refers to Jesus — and the reader of the NWT has no way to tell the two situations apart, since the English says "Jehovah" in both.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Redeeming Culture, Not Fleeing It](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/redeeming-culture-acts17.md) — Paul reused a pagan altar to preach Christ (Acts 17:22-31) [Practice]