2 Corinthians — Chapter 11

Authorship & Background

Map & Geography

• Damascus (v.32): Ancient Syrian city; site of Paul's conversion.

Places on this map

• DamascusDamascus, SyriaAn oasis city where the Barada river runs out of the Anti-Lebanon into the desert, about 135 miles north-east of Jerusalem. It sat astride the caravan roads to Mesopotamia and Arabia, which made Aram rich and made it Israel's most persistent northern rival. Wikipedia
• AramSyriaThe Syrian interior north-east of Israel, a set of city-states rather than one kingdom, with Damascus the strongest. Aramaic, its language, became the everyday speech of the whole region including Judea. Wikipedia

Towns sit on their excavated or traditional site. Regions, rivers and seas are ringed rather than dotted, because for those a single point is only an anchor. Coastlines from Natural Earth.

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Macedonia in about AD 55–56, in the sharp final section of the letter (chs 10–13), where he answers a group of newcomers in Corinth who claim to be apostles and have been running him down. They boast of their speaking skill, their Jewish pedigree and their visions, and they treat Paul's refusal to take the church's money as proof that he is second-rate. Paul thinks boasting is foolish, but the church is being pulled away from Christ, so he plays the fool on purpose. The result is a piece of sustained irony, usually called the "fool's speech" (11:1–12:13). Its punch line is that Paul's true credentials are not his achievements but his sufferings and weakness.

Paul and the False Apostles (vv1–15)

• "Bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me!" (v1). Paul asks permission to do something he finds distasteful: talk about himself. The second "bear with me" can also be read as a statement, "and indeed you are bearing with me." The Tyndale notes take it as irony either way. The Corinthians are happy to put up with plenty from others (vv4, 19–20), so surely they can put up with a little from Paul.
• "A divine jealousy" (v2). Literally "a jealousy of God." This is not petty envy. It is the kind of jealousy God himself has for his people, a love that will not share them with a rival (Exod 34:14; Hos 2:19–20). Paul feels on God's behalf what God feels.
• "I betrothed you to one husband" (v2). The verb harmozō means to join or fit together, and here to give in marriage. In Jewish custom betrothal was a binding stage before the wedding, broken only by divorce, and unfaithfulness during it counted as adultery. Paul pictures himself as the bride's father or the bridegroom's friend (John 3:29), who arranged the match when he preached Christ in Corinth and now guards the bride until the wedding day, when he will "present" her to Christ. The Old Testament often calls Israel the LORD's bride (Isa 54:5; 62:5), and the New Testament carries the picture to the church and the marriage supper of the Lamb (Eph 5:25–27; Rev 19:7).
• "As the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning" (v3). The danger is not that the church will openly reject Christ but that its thinking will be quietly "led astray" from "a sincere and pure devotion to him." "Sincere" translates haplotēs, singleness of heart, the same word used for undivided generosity in 8:2. "Pure" is a textual question: some manuscripts include it and some do not. Either way the picture is of a single-minded bride. Eve was not dragged from God by force. She was talked out of trusting him (Gen 3:1–6), and Paul says the same thing is happening in Corinth.
• "Another Jesus… a different spirit… a different gospel" (v4). We do not know exactly what the newcomers taught. They were not obviously denying Jesus, or the church would have noticed. The Tyndale notes suggest they preached a powerful, triumphant Christ and left out the cross, and saw themselves as impressive preachers above hardship. That fits the whole letter, where Paul keeps insisting that Christ "was crucified in weakness" (13:4) and that God's power shows itself in weak messengers (4:7–12). The scandal is not only what the visitors preach but that the Corinthians "put up with it readily enough."
• "These super-apostles" (v5). Paul's word is hyperlian, "beyond-exceedingly" or "extra-super," a word that appears only here and in 12:11. It is sarcastic. A few interpreters think Paul means the Jerusalem apostles (Peter, James and John), whose names the newcomers may have been dropping. Most think he means the newcomers themselves, since he goes on to call them "false apostles" (v13), and he never speaks of Peter or James this way.
• "Unskilled in speaking" (v6). The word is idiōtēs, a private person, a layman, someone without professional training. It is the word used of Peter and John as "uneducated, common men" (Acts 4:13). Greek culture prized trained speakers, and Paul's critics said his letters were weighty but "his speech of no account" (10:10). He grants that he is no polished orator. He does not grant that he lacks knowledge, and he chose plain preaching on purpose so their faith would rest on God's power (1 Cor 2:1–5).
• "Did I commit a sin… because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge?" (v7). A biting question. In Corinth, teachers of philosophy and rhetoric charged fees, and a teacher who refused payment looked either cheap or suspicious. Paul had worked as a tentmaker there (Acts 18:3) and defended his right to be paid while refusing to use it (1 Cor 9:12–18). The newcomers, who did take money, apparently said his refusal proved he knew he was no real apostle.
• "I robbed other churches" (v8). The verb sylaō means to strip or plunder, a soldier's word for taking spoil. Paul deliberately overstates: he took gifts from poorer churches so he could serve rich Corinth for nothing. "Support" (opsōnion) is a soldier's ration money, the word used in Romans 6:23 for sin's "wages."
• "The brothers who came from Macedonia" (v9). Most likely Silas and Timothy, who arrived in Corinth while Paul was there (Acts 18:5). The Philippians were the church that sent gifts again and again (Phil 4:15–16). The poor Macedonians of chapter 8 were funding Paul's work in wealthy Achaia.
• "Because I do not love you? God knows I do!" (v11). Some in Corinth took his refusal as coldness, as if he would not let them close. Paul calls God as witness. His reasons for refusing were love for them and protection of the gospel, not distance.
• "To undermine the claim" (v12). The newcomers want to be seen as working "on the same terms" as Paul. Paul will go on preaching free to deny them that comparison. If they want to match him, let them work for nothing too.
• "False apostles, deceitful workmen" (v13). Now the irony drops away. Pseudapostoloi, "false apostles," may be Paul's own coinage. "Disguising themselves" is metaschēmatizō, to change outward form or appearance. The same verb comes three times in vv13–15: they disguise themselves as apostles, Satan disguises himself, and his servants disguise themselves. The repetition makes the point: it is all costume.
• "Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (v14). Scripture never describes Satan appearing this way, but Jewish writings of the time did. In The Life of Adam and Eve Satan takes the form of an angel to deceive Eve a second time. Paul's point is simple: evil rarely looks evil. Paul has already warned the Corinthians about Satan's "designs" (2:11), and he will later tell the Galatians that even "an angel from heaven" preaching another gospel is accursed (Gal 1:8).
• "Servants of righteousness… Their end will correspond to their deeds" (v15). "Servants" is diakonoi, the word for those who serve at someone else's direction. The fakes dress as servants of righteousness. God will judge by deeds, not costume (5:10; Rom 2:6).
• Commentators: All three see Paul as the friend of the bridegroom guarding a betrothed bride. Henry calls a soul's conversion its marriage to Christ and describes Paul's jealousy as love mixed with fear for those he loves. JFB renders the jealousy literally as "jealousy of God" and calls subtlety "the utter foe of the 'simplicity'" that rests wholly on Jesus. Guzik agrees with the Tyndale notes that the "other Jesus" was probably a strong, successful Christ stripped of weakness and the cross, and he presses the point that the deeper problem was the church's willingness to tolerate it. On v5 Guzik and JFB both read "super-apostles" as sarcasm aimed at the rivals, not at Peter or James. Guzik explains v8's "robbed" with the image of stripping armor from a fallen soldier. The lexicon supports "strip, plunder, spoil," though the specific battlefield picture is his illustration. Henry calls the rivals "counterfeit apostles" and notes that Paul's taking support from other churches shows he was not against ministers being paid in principle.

Paul's Sufferings as an Apostle (vv16–33)

• "Accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little" (v16). Paul puts on the fool's costume knowingly and asks the Corinthians to watch. Ancient audiences knew the stage figure of the fool who speaks truth through absurdity, and Paul uses something like it.
• "Not as the Lord would but as a fool" (v17). This is not Paul denying inspiration. He is saying that boasting about himself is not the way Christ behaved or taught. He is borrowing his opponents' method in order to expose it.
• "For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves!" (v19). Pure sarcasm. The Corinthians prided themselves on wisdom (1 Cor 4:10), and yet they put up with real fools.
• Slaves, devoured, taken advantage of, airs, struck in the face (v20). Five verbs describe how the newcomers were treating the church: controlling them, eating up their resources, exploiting them, lording it over them, even slapping them. Striking someone in the face was the ultimate insult (1 Kings 22:24; Acts 23:2), so this may be literal or a vivid way to describe humiliating treatment. Either way, the Corinthians took it and admired the men who did it.
• "We were too weak for that!" (v21). Paul's driest line. He pleads guilty to the charge of weakness: he never treated them like that.
• "Are they Hebrews? So am I" (v22). Three titles of Jewish identity. "Hebrews" may point to Hebrew- or Aramaic-speaking Jews with roots in the homeland. "Israelites" is the covenant people (Rom 9:4). "Offspring of Abraham" is heirs of the promise. The rivals were evidently Jewish Christians who used their heritage as a credential. Paul has every one of them (Phil 3:5: "a Hebrew of Hebrews"). Elsewhere he says that in Christ these things are not the point at all (Gal 3:28–29), but here he plays the game to show it proves nothing.
• "Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman" (v23). The boast escalates, and so does the disclaimer. "Madman" is paraphroneō, to be out of one's mind, stronger than "fool." Then comes the twist. Instead of listing achievements, Paul offers a record of beatings. A Roman official listed honors and offices on a monument. Paul lists his scars.
• "Five times… the forty lashes less one" (v24). Deuteronomy 25:1–3 allowed up to forty blows. The rabbis stopped at thirty-nine so a miscount could never break the law. The Mishnah describes the victim stripped to the waist, bent over, and whipped with a strap across chest and back. Synagogues used this discipline on Jews who were judged to have broken the law. That Paul took it five times means he kept going back to the synagogue and kept submitting to its discipline rather than abandoning his people (Rom 9:1–3). Acts records none of these five floggings.
• "Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned" (v25). Rods were the Roman punishment carried out by magistrates' attendants. Acts tells of one, at Philippi, where it was illegal because Paul was a Roman citizen (Acts 16:22–23, 37). The stoning was at Lystra, where he was left for dead (Acts 14:19).
• "Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea" (v25). None of these is the famous shipwreck at Malta (Acts 27), which came several years after this letter. Paul's travels in Acts include plenty of sea voyages, but Luke tells of none of these wrecks. The list is a reminder of how much of Paul's life Acts leaves out.
• "Danger from rivers, danger from robbers" (v26). Eight dangers in a row. Mountain roads in Asia Minor crossed rivers that flooded without warning, and bandits worked roads like the route through the Taurus mountains to Pisidian Antioch. "My own people" and "Gentiles" match Acts again and again (Acts 13:50; 14:5; 17:5; 19:23–41). The last, "false brothers," is the most painful, because the danger came from inside the church (Gal 2:4).
• "Toil and hardship… sleepless nights… hunger and thirst… cold and exposure" (v27). These are the costs of a working missionary who supported himself, traveled cheaply and often had nowhere to stay.
• "The daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches" (v28). After all the physical danger, this is the burden he names last. "Anxiety" (merimna) is the noun behind Jesus' "do not be anxious" (Matt 6:25). Paul is not boasting of anxiety as a virtue. He is telling the truth about what it costs to love churches, and Corinth gave him more than its share.
• "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?" (v29). He feels every believer's weakness as his own, and he burns with anger when anyone trips someone else into sin. This is a shepherd's heart, the opposite of the newcomers who "make slaves" of the flock (v20).
• "I will boast of the things that show my weakness" (v30). The turning point of the speech, and the doorway to 12:1–10, where he will say, "when I am weak, then I am strong."
• "He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying" (v31). An oath, because the list sounds unbelievable and because the next story is so humiliating.
• The basket at Damascus (vv32–33). Paul ends his list of sufferings with an escape, told plainly. Aretas IV was king of the Nabataean Arabs (capital Petra, in modern Jordan) from about 9 BC to AD 40. "Governor" is ethnarchēs, an ethnarch, a ruler over an ethnic community. Scholars debate whether Aretas actually controlled Damascus at this point or whether his official only had authority over the Nabataean community there. Either way, the date is about AD 37–39, a few years after Paul's conversion (Gal 1:17–18). Acts 9:23–25 tells the same escape and says that the Jews of Damascus were plotting to kill him and watching the gates. Paul's account adds the Nabataean governor. Both can be true: Paul's enemies may have enlisted the authorities. The "basket" (sarganē) was a large woven hamper of rope.
• Why end with that? Roman soldiers received the "wall crown" (corona muralis) for being the first over an enemy wall in a siege. Paul's proudest memory is going down a wall in a basket, in the dark, running for his life. Many scholars think the contrast is intended. Either way, the man who entered Damascus to arrest Christians (Acts 9:1–2) left it as a hunted fugitive.
• Commentators: All three read the list as Paul's real credentials. Henry sums up the scourgings: "Five times he fell under their lash, and received forty stripes save one." He counts "the care of all the churches" as heavier than persecution, because it meant bearing their scandals and weaknesses, and calls the Damascus escape the first of the dangers of Paul's life. JFB points out that Acts records only one beating with rods, while Clement of Rome says Paul was in chains seven times. It argues that the careful forty-minus-one detail is something a forger "would have not been likely to observe." It suggests the night and day in the deep may have meant swimming or clinging to wreckage, and it reads the face-slapping in v20 as done "under the pretext of divine zeal," the height of insolence. JFB's comments end at v32. Guzik notes that diakonos in v23 is a lowly servant's word, while the rivals had turned "minister" into a title of privilege. The lexicon supports both "servant" and "menial." He calls the basket escape Paul's apprenticeship in persecution: the proud Saul entered Damascus with authority and left it humbled.

Pointing to Christ

The false apostles offered a Christ without weakness and called it strength. Paul answers with a life that looks like his Lord's: humbled so others might be exalted (v7), beaten, hunted and carried in his heart the weight of others. His boast is not that he looks like a winner but that he bears the marks of the crucified one (Gal 6:17). The bridegroom Paul guards the bride for is the one who loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph 5:25). Real apostles do not take the bride for themselves. They point her to him.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the false apostles, Satan's disguise, Paul's suffering catalog, and his boasting in weakness.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 2 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Deception That Looks Like Light (v.14) — Paul warns that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, which is why false teaching can look so convincing. Do you evaluate leaders and teachers by how impressive they seem, or by their faithfulness to the true Gospel?
• Credentials Written in Scars (vv.23-28) — Paul's proof of genuine ministry is a catalog of beatings, shipwrecks, hunger, and constant concern for the churches, not success or comfort. How do you tend to measure whether your own faithfulness is real — by ease and growth, or by endurance under pressure?
• Carrying Others' Weakness as Your Own (v.29) — Paul says he feels every believer's weakness personally, as if it were his own. Do you actually feel empathy for struggling believers, or are you quicker to judge their weakness?
• Boasting in Weakness, Not Strength (v.30) — Paul chooses to boast about what reveals his weakness rather than his accomplishments. What would it look like for you to be honest about your weaknesses instead of hiding them?