The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Ver. 20. — For ye suffer if a man bring you into bondage. This is aimed at the insatiable arrogance, avarice, and tyranny of the false apostles. You suffer false apostles, who imperiously treat you as slaves, who devour you by extorting from you your goods, who are exalted by their self-praise, who smite you in the face, not with the palms of their hands, but with insults. Hence he adds : “ I speak as concerning reproach.” These words, therefore, contain a sharp rebuke. These men squander your money, take away your freedom and honour, load you with taunts, as though you were slaves ; but I have borne myself humbly, have lived at my own expense, have wished to put upon you the easy yoke of Christ. Yet you prefer them to me, as though, when compared with these, your imperious lords, nay, tyrants, I was not sufficiently well-born, or powerful, or eloquent. S. Bernard (de Consid. lib. i. c. 3) says : “ When you may be free there is no virtue in the patience which lets you become a slave . Do not conceal the slavery into which you are being daily led, while you know it not. It is the mark of a dull and heavy heart not to feel its own continual trouble . Trouble gives to the hearing understanding, provided it be not excessive . If it is, it gives not understanding, but carelessness.”
Let superiors and prelates console themselves by the example of S. Paul, when they duly do their duty, and are despised by those under them, and see others preferred before them. It has ever been the custom of the world, and ever will be till the end, as Salmeron notices here, to obstinately resist the servants of God, to murmur, and, meeting rebuke, on the least occasion, to complain of even moderate severity ; to spurn all discipline ; to submit servilely to impostors, libertines, and false apostles; to entrust everything to them; to bear patiently whatever burden they may choose to impose. The Israelites, e.g., despised the holy and gentle Samuel, and preferred to bear the yoke of a self-willed and tyrannical king.
Ver. 21 . — I speak as concerning reproach. This belongs to the preceding. The “smiting on the face” spoken of is here explained to be mental, not physical— consisting in the ignominy and revilings cast, as it were, in their faces by the false apostles. This “ smiting ” is no less wrong than if they had been beaten like slaves. Others, however, interpret these words to mean : “ I say this to your shame.” This, however, would require πρός instead of κατά.
As though we had been weak. Refer this to the words, ye suffer . You suffer these bold and imperious false apostles ; me you do not, but rather despise me as weak and timid, as though I could not have acted more imperiously than I have done. I could, indeed, have done so, but I would not, through humility, modesty, and abounding charity (Chrysostom).
Whereinsoever any is bold. If any one ventures to boast foolishly, I too can do the same.
Ver. 22 . — Are they Hebrews? so am I. The word Hebrew is derived either (1.) from a Hebrew word denoting “ across the stream,” in allusion to their descent from Abraham, who crossed the Euphrates from Chaldaea to dwell in Palestine. Hebrews in this sense would mean (to coin a word) transamnine, as we speak of transmarine or transalpine. Abraham, after crossing the Euphrates, is the first to be called Hebrew (Gen. xiv. 13). The LXX and Aquila render the word there “crosser ; ” S. Augustine (qu. 29 in Gen.) renders it “ transfluvial.” So Chrysostom, Origen, Theodoret understand the word. (2.) Or the Jews were called Hebrews as being descended from Heber, Abraham’s forefather, the only man who with his family, after the confusion of tongues at Babel, retained the primeval Hebrew tongue, together with true faith, religion, and piety. (Cf. Gen. x. 21, and xi. 1, et seq.) Those, then, are wrong who suppose that Hebraei is derived from Abrahaei. S. Augustine, it is true, at one time held this opinion (de Consens . Evang. lib. i. c. 14), but in his Retractations (lib. ii. c. 14) he gave it up. The meaning of the Apostle, at all events, is this : These false apostles glory in their birth — in their being, as Hebrews, descendants of Heber, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; in their possession of the holy religion of their ancestors, and the primeval tongue. But I also am a Hebrew and descendant of Abraham — like him in stock, tongue, faith, and religion.
Ver. 23. — Are they ministers of Christ? The Latin version takes this in the indicative, and supposes S. Paul to concede, for the sake of argument, that the false apostles were ministers of Christ. Be it so, but I am much more truly such than they.
In labours more abundant. Let prelates and doctors take notice from this, that they should base their influence, as S. Paul did, not on external show, but on labours and mode of life. The Fourth Council of Carthage (c. 5) says : “Let a bishop have a sordid dress, a scanty table , and poor living, and let him seek to have his high office revered through his faith and the merits of his life.”
S. Bernard, quoting this passage in his work, De Consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugenius, says, (lib. ii. c. 6) : “How excellent a ministry is this! What king holds a more glorious office ? If you must needs glory, the life of the Saints is put before your eyes, the glorying of the Apostles is set forth . Seems that to you a little matter ? Would that one would give to me to be like the Saints in their glorying! The Apostle exclaims : ‘ God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Recognise thy heritage in the cross of Christ, in abundant labours . Happy the man who could say : ‘I have laboured more than they all.’ This is glorying indeed, but there is nothing in it empty, slothful, or effeminate. If labour terrifies, the reward beckons us onward. Though he laboured more than all, yet he did not elaborate the whole work, and yet there is room. Go into the field of thy Lord, and notice carefully how the ancient curse holds sway in an abundant crop of thorns and thistles. Go forth, I say, into the world ; for the field is the world, and it has been entrusted to you. Go into it, not as a lord but as a steward, who will one day be called on to give an account.”
In stripes above measure. More than can be told or believed.
In deaths oft. In dangers of death, when my companions, or others, were wounded or slain, as, eg., by robbers, or in popular outbreaks.
Ver. 24. — Forty stripes save one. The Lord had ordered, in Deut. xxv. 3, that the number of stripes should not exceed forty. The Jews, to make sure of obedience to this precept, used to inflict on criminals one less.
Ver. 25 . — I have been in the deep . The Greek word for the deep may refer to a well or a prison, as well as the sea. Hence (1.) some think, says Theophylact, that that well is meant in which Paul is said to have lain concealed after escaping from the attack made on him by the people of Lystra (Acts xiv. 18). (2.) Baronius (Annals, a.d. 58), following Bede and Theodoret, thinks that the Cyzicenum, that deep and loathsome dungeon, like the Barathrum at Athens and the Tullianum at Rome, into which Paul was thrown, is here meant. (3.) It is better to understand the deep to be the sea, and to be an explanation of the hardships of his shipwreck : “A night and a day I have been in the deep.” In other words, he says : I was tossed about by so violent a tempest that I seemed to be days and nights in the depths of the sea (Maldonatus Not Afanusc.). Or it may be that he means to say that after his shipwreck he spent a day and a night tossed by the waves, not in a boat or on a raft, but swimming in the deep, on the open sea (Theophylact, Ambrose, S. Thomas). Haymo says that this latter explanation of S. Paul’s rescue alive from the belly of the deep, like another Jonah, is the tradition of the Fathers.
Of these scourgings and this shipwreck there is no record in the Acts of the Apostles. The shipwreck at Melita, narrated in Acts xxvii, happened long after this, when Paul was sent a prisoner to Rome. Only one scourging is mentioned, that in Acts xvi., and only one stoning, that in Acts xiv. S. Luke, it is evident, therefore, is silent on many details of S. Paul’s life.
Ver. 26 . — In perils by my own countrymen . Through the plots that the Jews often entered into against him (Anselm).
In painfulness . Ærumna (Latin version), which, says Cicero, is laborious toil, as, e.g., when one that is tired out is forced, for the sake of rest, to undertake fresh toils.
The things in which the Apostle glories are those that not only many Christians now-a-days but many clergy would be ashamed of, as S. Bernard laments when commenting on the words, “Lo, we have left all.” Whither have we drifted ? Where has the apostolic Spirit gone? Whither are fled the humility, labours, sufferings, and zeal of the primitive Church? The Apostles, the princes of the Church, Christ’s lieutenants, do not rejoice in their palaces, their carriages, their silken robes, in an attending crowd of noblemen, domestics, soldiers, horses, and hounds ; in banquets and dinners ; in fat benefices ; in an effeminate, luxurious, and sumptuous life ; but they exult and glory in hunger, thirst, painfulness, and weariness ; cold and nakedness ; in continual journeying to barbarous nations ; in persecution, preaching, scourgings, beatings, stonings, death, martyrdom, fatigues by day and night ; they are made all things to all men ; they scorn no one ; they are fathers of the poor and the afflicted ; those that are barbarous, ignorant, and poor they teach : they preach to them the Gospel, comfort them, give them alms. This was the calling of the Apostles ; this was the high dignity of the princes of the Church, of which Paul here boasts ; this was the spirit of the early Christians, both clergy and people. Nor has this spirit, God be thanked, died out in this age. Our age has had, and still has its Borromeo, Pius, Xavier, Menesius, Gaspar, Hosius, and others like minded.