Bible Commentaries
2 Corinthians 9

Verses 1-15

IX 1-5 Paul will be Disgraced If they are Backward —He appeals to their affection towards himself as well as to their emulation. Too frank and jocular to be called diplomatic. The whole paragraph is an explanation of boasting’ in 8:24, hence the ’for’. 1. ’Ministry’: ’Assistance’ (the collection). 2. ’Forward mind’: ’Eagerness’. Achaia of course includes Corinth, its capital. Omit ’also’. ’Has been ready since last year’;cf. 8:10. Paul seems to have assured the Macedonians that the Corinthians made very short work of anything they had begun. ’Your zeal has roused to action very many.’3. ’I am sending’: see note on ’went’ in 8:17. St Paul evidently wished the Corinthian collection to be complete or nearly so before his arrival, although he intended to make a long stay at Corinth. ’In this behalf:’ ’In this point’. 4. ’the Macedonians’: probably the three first men named in Acts 20:4, ’me . . . we’: both singular and lural seem to mean only Paul. He can assume that his reputation is as dear to them as their own—he must have already felt very sure of the majority among them. ’Matter’: the Greek word can also mean expectation or confidence. Same ’doubt exists in 11:17. 5. ’blessing . . . covetousness’: ’an act of charity, not a scheme of exploitation’.

6-15 The Blessings of Open-handed Charity—6. ’in blessings’: ’with an eye to (gaining) blessings’, i.e. gives material goods, confident of a reward from God.

7. ’Every one’: a verb such as ’ought to give’ must be supplied. ’sadness’, i.e. a sullen, grudging spirit. ’of necessity’—with a feeling of compulsion. ’For God’, etc. cf. LXX (but not the Hebrew) text of Proverbs 22:8. ’God blesses a cheerful man and a ready giver’.

8. ’to make every blessing abound for you’,i.e. to reward their charity by spiritual and also temporal blessings.

9. From Ps 111 (112):9 (one of the Sunday Vesperspsalms). ’He’ is the good man. ’Dispersed’: ’scattered’ (his gifts). ’His justice’, etc., i.e. his deeds of charity will always be remembered by God, here and hereafter.

10. The subject now is God. ’bread . . . seed’, i.e. both enough for themselves and to give in charity, which, like the sown corn, will again produce a fruitful harvest. ’justice’: ’goodness’.

11. ’generosity which worketh’. etc. Here a new thought enters, which fills the rest of the chapter—the gratitude of the Palestinian Christians, both to God and to their benefactors, and the friendly interest and understanding which the gift would promote between Jewish and Gentile Christians. To Paul this moral result meant more than anything else. ’Through us’, i.e. Paul (or Paul and his assistants) as organizer of the collection.

12 ’administration . . . office’ he must surely intend to include the givers, therefore: the assistance (or relief) given by this act of charity’.

13. Another case of a loosely attached participle (’glorifying’): ’On seeing the evidence furnished by this relief, they will glorify God for your humble assent to the gospel of Christ and for your open-handed charity to themselves and to all men’.

14. There may be some fault in the Greek, but the general meaning seems to be: (1) The brethren at Jerusalem will pray for you. (2) They will feel a strong affection towards you because of this proof that the same Spirit is exerting his mighty influence at Corinth and at Jerusalem. It is this fellow-feeling between such diverse Christians that Paul calls an ’unspeakable gift’ in v 15.