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2Co_10:13. Εἰς τὰ ἄμετρα ] so that we with our καυχᾶσθαι go beyond measure, go into limitless extravagance. This is what is done by the man who measures himself by himself, because in that case no check external to himself is put on his imagination and self-exaltation. Such a man certainly has an object of the καυχᾶσθαι , and is not simply aiming at the having one (Hofmann), which would yield an absurd idea; but he has no bounds in the manner and degree of his καυχᾶσθαι ; he is wanting in μετριότης . Regarding the use of εἰς with an adjective of degree and the article, see Viger. ed. Herm. p. 596; Matthiae, p. 1349. On the expression itself, comp. Homer, Il. ii. 212, where Thersites is called ἀμετροεπής .
καυχησόμεθα ] The future asserts that this case will not occur. Comp. Rom_10:14, al.; Dissen, ad Dem. de Cor. p. 369.
ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ μέτρον τοῦ κανόνος , οὗ κ . τ . λ .] sc. καυχησόμεθα : but according to the measure of the boundary-line, which God (not our own choice) has assigned to us as measure, to reach even unto you, i.e. but our boasting will restrict and measure itself according to the limit which God has drawn for us, and by which He has measured off the sphere of our activity, in order that we should reach even to you with our working. By this Paul is manifestly aiming at the vaingloriousness of the false apostles, who decked themselves with extraneous feathers, inasmuch as they intruded into the provinces of others, into spheres which had not been assigned to them by God as the measure of their activity: as, indeed, in particular they had come also to Corinth, which lay within the boundary-line of Paul’s apostolic action, and were now boasting as if the church-life in Corinth were chiefly their work. For, although they could not give themselves out to be the founders of the church (Baur, Tüb. Zeitschr. 1832, 4, p. 101), they could still put forward as their merit the rapid growth of the church and many points of detail, and thereby presume to put the apostle in the shade. Olshausen thinks that the false apostles had appropriated to themselves Corinth as their province, because they had already been at work there before Paul; but that the latter had still felt himself at liberty to preach in Corinth, because no apostle had been there before him. This is an hypothesis quite as superfluous as it is unhistorical, since neither in the Book of Acts is there found any trace of Christianity at Corinth before Paul’s arrival, nor in the Epistles, in which, on the contrary, he states expressly that he was the first to preach there (1Co_3:6; 1Co_3:10), and that all other teachers had entered later into the work (1Co_4:15).
κατὰ τὸ μέτρον τοῦ κανόνος ] Here τὸ μέτρον is the measure defined for the καυχᾶσθαι , as is clear from the previous οὐχὶ εἰς τὰ ἄμετρα καυχ .,—and τοῦ κανόνος is the genitivus subjecti: the measure given by the drawn measuring-line. And the subsequent μετροῦ [311] is an apposition to τοῦ κανόνος not at all unnatural (as Hofmann declares it), but attracted by the relative clause according to a very frequent Greek usage (see Bernhardy, p. 302; Pflugk, ad Eur. Hec. 771; Stallbaum, ad Plat. Phaed. p. 66 E; Rep. p. 402 C; Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 246 [E. T. 286]); consequently not again the measure of the boasting, but, as appears from the definition of the object aimed at ἐφικέσθαι ἄχρι κ . ὑμῶν , the spatial measure, namely, how far one is to reach (see what follows), or, dropping the figure: the measure of extent of the destined working. Paul, namely, conceives of the local extension assigned to his official working as a space marked out by God with a measuring-line, in which he takes his stand and is able to reach to all points of it without unduly stretching or straining himself, 2Co_10:14. Hence: ἐφικέσθαι ἄχρι καὶ ὑμῶν , which is not simply exegetical (Hofmann), nor does it express the consequence (Rückert, de Wette), but is, in accordance with the notion of ἐμέρ ., to be taken as infinitive of definition of οὗ ἐμέρ . ἡμ . ὁ θεὸς μέτρου .
κανών does not mean sphere of vocation (Flatt and many others), but measuring-rod, measuring-line. Here the latter. Comp. Gal_6:16; Aq. Job_38:5; Psa_18:4. See in general, Duncan, Lex. ed. Rost. p. 587 f. On μερίζειν τινί τι , to impart something to one, assign as one’s share, comp. Rom_12:3; 1Co_7:17; Heb_7:23; Polyb. xi. 28. 9, xxxi. 18. 3. The ἐφικνεῖσθαι is, in keeping with the figurative representation of the state of the matter (see especially 2Co_10:14), not to arrive at (Hofmann), which is only expressed by ἐφθάσαμεν , but to reach to, pertingere, as the Vulgate aptly renders it. The word is found nowhere else in the N. T., and is here selected for the sense indicated. Comp. Xen. Cyr. i. 1. 5, v. 5. 8; Plut. Mor. p. 190 E; Lucian, Jup. conf. 19, al.; also Sir_43:27; Sir_43:30. The Corinthians, because not to be found beyond the bounds of his κανών , were to the apostle ἐφικτοί , reachable.
[311] For which Grotius ought not to have conjectured μέτρον . But the most mistaken view as regards μέτρον is that lighted on by Hofmann, who attaches it to ὁ θεός : “the God of measure,” by which, in his view, it is affirmed that “to everything God sets some sort of measure.” As if this singular way of designating God (altogether different from such appellations as: the God of glory, of peace, of love, of hope, and the like) were even possible without the article before μέτρον ! In Wis_9:1, πατέρων required no article, according to the well-known anarthrous usage of πατήρ in the singular and plural; and in Sir_33:1, πάντων without the article is quite according to rule.