Vincent Word Studies - 1 Corinthians 13:3 - 13:3

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Vincent Word Studies - 1 Corinthians 13:3 - 13:3


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

Bestow (ψωμίσω)

Only here and Rom 12:20. See on sop, Joh 13:26. The verb means to feed out in morsels, dole out.

To be burned (ἵνα καυθήσωμαι)

The latest critical text reads καυχήσωμαι in order that I may glory, after the three oldest MSS. The change to burned might have been suggested by the copyist's familiarity with christian martyrdoms, or by the story of the three Hebrews. Bishop Lightfoot finds a possible reference to the case of an Indian fanatic who, in the time of Augustus, burned himself alive at Athens. His tomb there was visible in Paul's time, and may have been seen by him. It bore the inscription: “Zarmochegas the Indian from Bargosa, according to the ancient customs of India, made himself immortal and lies here.” Calanus, an Indian gymnosophist who followed Alexander, in order to get rid of his sufferings, burned himself before the Macedonian army (see Plutarch, “Alexander”). Martyrdom for the sake of ambition was a fact of early occurrence in the Church, if not in Paul's day. Farrar says of his age, “both at this time and in the persecution of Diocletian, there were Christians who, oppressed by debt, by misery, and sometimes even by a sense of guilt, thrust themselves into the glory and imagined redemptiveness of the baptism of blood.... The extravagant estimate formed of the merits of all who were confessors, became, almost immediately, the cause of grave scandals. We are horified to read in Cyprian's letter that even in prison, even when death was imminent, there were some of the confessors who were puffed up with vanity and pride, and seemed to think that the blood of martyrdom would avail them to wash away the stains of flagrant and even recent immoralities” (“Lives of the Fathers,” ch. vi., sec. 2).