Bible Commentaries
2 Corinthians 11

Verses 1-33

XI 1-15 He prepares for Self-assertion, and roundly denounces the False Apostles —1. ’My folly’: ’a little folly from me’. The folly is the self-praise which begins in 22. This is the first hint that it is coming, but he dignesses again as if he shrank from the painful necessity.

2. ’Jealous for you’ with God’s own jealousy, a divine jealousy. He uses language familiar from the OT. God was the bridegroom of his people, his church, and Paul was the bridegroom’s friend, vigilant against rival suitors and lovers. It is clearly implied that the false teachers are enemies of God.

3. ’Subtilty’: ’craftiness’. ’From the purity and innocence that are due to Christ’.4. ’He that cometh’: ’the newcomer, the visitor’. It seems to denote some one of the False Apostles, or else is a collective term for them all. The best interpretation is: If the new teachers had brought a religion which surpassed what the Corinthians had already received from Paul, there would be some reason for honouring them. But instead of the word ’honour’ Paul characteristically substitutes ’endure’ for they had been haughty and exacting (see v 20). This sentence therefore implies that their doctrinal teaching was not unsound. (1 Cor Introd. C.) 5. ’I consider that I have not in any way been inferior to the greatest apostles’, i.e. to the Twelve. Many scholars think that Paul meant the False Apostles here, calling them ironically ’the great apostles’, but it is incredible that Paul should have honoured these adventurers by calling himself their equal, when his apostleship was in fact incomparably superior to theirs.

6. ’Rude’: untrained (in the professional orator’s art), see 10:10. ’Knowledge’—of God, as in 10:5. ’But . . . you’. The Greek may be corrupt, but the general sense probably is: ’But we have revealed (the truth) fully to you’.

7-11. These verses are an answer to the malicious lie that Paul by working for his living had admitted his inferiority to the Twelve. The False Apostles said that only the Twelve had a right to maintenance. Paul had already denied this in 1 Corinthians 9:1-15, and claimed the right for all missionaries. In order to be consistent and to outface Paul, the False Apostles had to make a pretence of earning their living (cf. v 12 and § 865i).

7. ’Humbling myself’ refers to manual work, more despised by pagans than by Jews. ’Exalted’: raised to the dignity of Christians. ’Freely’: without payment or cost.

8. ’Taken from’: plundered other churches’—a natural exaggeration (see 9), but it does mean that the poorer Macedonians had felt the sacrifice ’For your ministry:’ ’in order to serve you’.

9. Probably refers to his first visit to Corinth. He seems to have been ill and depressed, and perhaps not able to earn enough, but Silas and Timothy arrived with gifts of money from Thessalonica and Philippi, , Acts 18:5; Philippians 4:15; 1 Thessalonians 3:1-8. ’Wanted’: ’was in need’.

10. ’As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, this boast shall not be denied me in Achaia’. He observed the same rule in Asia and Macedonia.

11. He had given them his reasons, partly at least, in 1 Corinthians 9:15-18. Some loyal Corinthians had evidently been hurt at his refusal of help, and thought him cold and unfriendly. Other friends may have wished to support him in order to vindicate his equality to the Twelve. ’God knows’: implies that the preceding words are absurd.

12. ’That I’, etc. That I may not give any handle to those who are looking for a handle: that in their boasted mode of life they may be seen to stand just where I do. They had paraded their self-denial in refusing support: if Paul had accepted support, they would have used this as a handle, and redoubled their accusations of usurpation and rapacity, cf. 12:16. Some critics, relying on v 20, believe that the False Apostles did accept maintenance (cf.1 Corinthians 9:12), and that Paul continued to refuse it so that they could not say they stood on an equal footing with him in this matter. But v 20 need only mean that their self-support was a pretence and that they extorted gifts, etc.

13-15. The most downright attack in the epistle. Paul at last feels able to speak plainly.

13. ’For such men are false apostles, dishonest workmen’. These last words may include a sarcasm about their pretence of working for their living: ’disguising themselves as’. ’Transform’ has the same sense in vv 14 and 15. 1

4. ’Of light’: belonging to God’s glorious realm, cf. ’sons of light’.

15. ’Therefore it is nothing remarkable if his servants. . .’ ’Justice’, i.e. of divine goodness. Their reward will be what their deeds have deserved.

XI 16-29 St Paul indulges in the Foolishness of Boasting —Paul at last embarks fairly on the disagreeable task which he seems long to have been nerving himself for, and frankly compares his own service of Christ with that of the False Apostles. He does not here seek to prove his equality to the Twelve by appealing to Christ’s direct commission, as he does in Gal, chh 1-2. This for some good reason he considers unnecessary here. Many ideas and phrases in this passage carry us back to chh 1-6, especially to the picture of the true apostle (3:4-6:10). One passage supplements and completes the other. There we have the ideal, here the embodiment of it.

16. When he began the, sentence, he intended apparently to repeat v 1: ’Again I say, bear with a little folly from me’, but he breaks off and makes a new beginning: ’Again I say . . . Let no man think’, etc. The brackets therefore are misleading. ’Take me’: accept me, indulge me, as a fool.

17. ’According to God . . . flesh’. The same meanings as in 5:16 and 7:9. He is going to appear to imitate the worldlywise, not the saints. ’This matter’. Or perhaps ’this confidence’ or ’purpose’. The same doubt as in 9:4.

19-20. Ironical praise referring to the past conduct of the great number who had once been imposed upon by the False Apostles. Indignation and pity, smothered for months, and only half-revealed in the First Epistle, now find a free outlet when he feels sure of their loyalty. ’Devour you’. As the Pharisees ’devoured widows’ houses’. Take from you’: the Greek word probably means ’ ake you in, victimize you’, as in 12:16—deceit as well as rapacity. ’Lifted up’: ’Is arrogant’. ’Strike you’: ’treat you as dirt, trample on you’.

21. ’I confess with shame that I myself have indeed "cut a poor figure"’. It is practically a quotation of his enemies’ description of him in 10:10. He apologises for being such a poor bully. ’Wherein’, etc.: ’But wherever boldness is shown . . . I am bold too’.

22. The three terms (Hebrews, Israelites, seed of Abraham) all seem to mean precisely the same, and the repetition is only for emphasis. But perhaps the first may include the capacity to speak Aramaic.

23. ’Ministers’: ’servants’—a vague word which might mean any active help in spreading the gospel. ’I speak madly: I am a better one’. ’Stripes’: blows. ’Deaths’: i.e. dangers of death.

24-27. His heroic sufferings for Christ since his conversion, which had taken place seventeen to twenty-five years before. It is clear that the tale of endurance told by St Luke in the Acts falls far short of completeness—Luke’s omissions probably belong mostly to the earlier years of Paul’s work. Of the eight floggings which Paul mentions, only one is recorded by Luke (Acts 16:22). ’Forty . . . save one’. When flogging was imposed as a penalty by Jewish law, forty lashes was the maximum, and it was customary to make it thirty-nine for fear of a miscount, Deuteronomy 25:1-3. The Jews’ power to inflict such penalties outside Palestine must have been confined to those large cities where the Jewish communities were autonomous, § 587a. Therefore Damascus, Tarsus, and Antioch at an early date in Paul’s career are the most likely scenes of these sufferings.

25. ’With rods’, i.e. on the order of some Roman official. We know of only one case, the illegal flogging at Philippi (Acts 16:22). Only the higher provincial governors could order a Roman citizen to be flogged, and therefore the two other floggings were probably ordered by the governor of Syria on some accusation of causing disorder. ’Stoned’: this was at Lystra by a mob incited by Jews, eight or ten years before this (Acts 14:18). ’Thrice . . . shipwreck’. The shipwreck in Ac 27 was still to come, therefore these three disasters were probably in early voyages which are omitted in Ac. ’Depth of the sea’: ’on the open sea’, i.e. far from land, on a raft or wreckage. 26. ’Waters’: ’dangers from rivers’—flooded rivers which had to be crossed by fords or boats. ’Wilderness’: waste uninhabited areas through which some of the roads of Asia passed, e.g. the high passes over the Taurus. ’False brethren’: men nominally Christians, who hated him and were unscrupulous in their opposition. He gives this name to Judaizers in Galatians 2:4, but there were many other shades of opposition—the unsound mystics and rigorists, to say nothing of mere impostors.

27. ’Watchings’: ’loss of sleep’. Paul chose to do two men’s work, to be a missionary and a manual worker, and therefore often had to encrouch deeply on the night. Moreover the Christians often could only meet for services at night or before daybreak (Acts 20:7-11). ’Fastings’: most likely to be loss of meals owing to poverty, journeys, etc., cf. 6:5.

28. ’Without’, i.e. external things, bodily trials and dangers. He goes on to speak of mental trials. ’Instance’: ’care, anxiety’. There are several doubtful, points however in this verse.

29. He gives one example of his anxieties. ’Who is weak without my sharing his weakness?’ Paul regularly uses the word ’weak’ about Christians who were over-scrupulous especially in regard to food, holy days, etc., and insists that others are bound to make things easier for them even at the cost of inconvenience to themselves, see 1 Corinthians 8:9-13; Rom 14. ’On fire’ may mean both indignation and anxiety.

XI 30-XII 10 St Paul’s Ecstasy and his Chronic Infirmity —This difficult passage has three parts: (1) The escape from Damascus. (2) The ecstasy. (3) The infirmity. The words ’weakness’ (infirmity) and ’to be weak’ mark both its beginning and end, and come six times in all. This word certainly means his bodily infirmity or disease in 12:9. It seems best therefore to take ’infirmity’ throughout the passage as referring to this. Vv 30-33 are therefore a preparation for the definite mention of it in 12:7, but right in the middle of the passage he puts his ecstasy, no doubt because he considered that the best setting for it. If we assume that his infirmity was some sort of nervous trouble (a widely held view), it seems quite possible that it was caused or aggravated by the manner of his escape from Damascus, and this would explain (what is otherwise incomprehensible) the special emphasis on that event here. He does not expressly connect the two, but that might be unnecessary in writing to anybody who knew the exact form of his disorder. The famous story about Pascal’s carriage-accident, if it is true, would be a parallel. Many scholars however think that ’weakness’ at the beginning and end of this passage refers back to the heroic sufferings of 24-27, while admitting that in 12:9 the word means his disorder. But in that case the word changes its meaning twice in the 14 verses. Moreover the sufferings of 24-27 are proofs of strength not weakness; they are glorious, not humiliating. And why should Paul apologise for mentioning them if he thought they were signs of weakness?

31. Referring to the connexion between his escape and the infirmity.

32. The event occurred two or three years after his conversion, at least 15 years before this letter. ’Governor’: ’the ethnarch of King Aretas’. Aretas was king of the Nabataeans, whose territory, called ’ Arabia’, stretched along the east and south of Palestine. Damascus seems to have been added to it about a.d. 38. The ethnarch would be the local governor appointed by Aretas. The event is described in Acts 9:23-5.33. ’Basket’. The Greek word means a large flexible basket, used to carry hay and sometimes corn.