This is not a request for information. It is a shout of triumph. Paul speaks to death and the grave as if they were enemies who have lost the battle, and he asks where their power has gone. The first question looks for death's "sting," its power to wound. The second looks for the grave's "victory," its hold on those it has taken.

Barnes calls it a triumphant view that bursts on the soul when it sees that "the work of the second Adam has repaired the ruins of the first." He adds, "Probably Paul did not intend this as a direct quotation"; Paul simply spoke in the language of Scripture he knew well.

Paul answers his own questions. "The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law" (1 Corinthians 15:56). Then he breaks into thanks: "But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:57). He closes the chapter with a call to steady work: "be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Paul's words echo Hosea 13:14, where God says, "O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." Gill says the words are "taken out of" Hosea 13:14, and that where the English of Hosea reads "I will be," "the apostle translates 'where', and that very rightly." The Greek word for sting, kentron, Barnes says, "denotes, properly, a prick, a point," like the sting of an insect or a goad. In the Textus Receptus (the Greek text behind the KJV), the second line addresses hades, the realm of the dead, which the KJV renders "grave"; other Greek editions read "death" in both lines and put "victory" first, which is why the ESV differs.

The prophet's words in Hosea become Paul's song. What God promised long ago, He fulfills in the resurrection: "He will swallow up death in victory" (Isaiah 25:8), which Paul calls "the saying that is written" (1 Corinthians 15:54).

Death still comes, but it has lost its sting. Matthew Henry explains why: "The sting of death is sin," and "Christ, by dying, has taken out this sting; he has made atonement for sin." So, Henry says, "Death may seize a believer, but it cannot hold him in its power." The victory is not something believers win. It is something God "giveth us" through Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).