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2Co_2:2. As reason for his undertaking not to come to his readers again ἐν λύπῃ , Paul states that he on his own part could not in this case hope to find any joy among them. Comp. 2Co_2:3. For if I afflict you, who is there also to give me joy, except him who is afflicted by me?—i.e., if I on my part ( ἐγώ is emphatic[138]) make you afflicted, then results the contradiction that the very one who is afflicted by me is the one who should give me joy. Against this view Billroth and Rückert object that εἰ μὴ … ἐμοῦ is superfluous, and even in the way. No; it discloses the absurdity of the case conditioned by εἰ ἐγὼ λυπῶ ὑμᾶς . Pelagius, Bengel, and others, including Billroth, render: who yet so much gladdens me as he who lets himself be afflicted by me (which is a sign of amendment)? Comp. Chrysostom, and Theodoret, Erasmus, and others. So also Olshausen, who sees here an indirect warning to take the former censure more to heart. But against this perversion of ὁ λυπούμενος in a middle sense, we may decisively urge:—(1) that the sense of 2Co_2:2 would not stand in any relation to 2Co_2:1 as furnishing a reason for it; and (2) the οὐχ ἵνα λυπηθῆτε in 2Co_2:4. Rückert sees in εἰ … ὑμᾶς an aposiopesis; then begins a new question, which contains the reason why he may not afflict them, because it would be unloving, nay, ungrateful, to afflict those who cause him so much joy. Hence the meaning, touchingly expressed, is: “I might not come to you afflicting you; for if I had done so, I should have afflicted those very ones who give me joy: this would have been unloving on my part.” This is all the more arbitrary, since, logically at least, it must have stood in the converse order: καὶ τίς ἐστιν ὁ λυπούμενος ἐξ ἐμοῦ εἰ μὴ ὁ εὐφραίνων με . Hofmann holds still more arbitrarily and oddly that εἰ γάρ is elliptical protasis, and ἐγὼ λυπῶ ὑμᾶς apodosis: if I come to you again in affliction, I make you afflicted, and who is there then who gladdens me, except him whom affliction coming from me befalls? The well-known omission of the verb in the protasis after εἰ is, in fact, a usage of quite another nature (see Hartung, Partikell. II. p. 213; Stallbaum, ad Plat. Rep. p. 497; Krüger, § lxv. 5. 11). Besides, this subtlety falls with Hofmann’s view of 2Co_2:1.
καί ] also, expresses after the conditional clause the simultaneousness of what is contained in the apodosis, consequently without the interrogative form: there is also no one, etc. See Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 130 f.; Buttmann, neut. Gramm. p. 311 [E. T. 362].
ὁ λυπούμενος ] does not mean the incestuous person (so, against the entire connection, Beza, Calovius, Cornelius a Lapide, Heumann); but the singular of the participle with the article denotes the one who gives joy, as such, in abstracto. Comp. 1Pe_3:13, al.; Xen. Cyr. ii. 2. 20, al. Paul might have written τίνες εἰσὶν οἱ κ . τ . λ ., but he was not under necessity of doing s.
ἐξ ἐμοῦ ] source of the λυπεῖσθαι . See Bernhardy, p. 227; Schoem. ad Is. p. 348; Winer, p. 345 [E. T. 385]. Comp. ἀφʼ ὧν , 2Co_2:3; but ἐξ is “quiddam penitius,” Bengel.
[138] This emphasis is usually not recognised. But in the ἐγώ there lies a contrast to others who do not stand in such an intimate relation to the readers as Paul. Comp. Osiander.