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2Co_2:7. So that you, on the contrary, rather (potius) pardon and comfort. This is the consequence which ensued, connected with the utterance of ἱκανὸν κ . τ . λ … Hence the notion of δεῖν (Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 754; Kühner, ad Xen. Mem. ii. 2. 1) is not here to be supplied, as Billroth and Olshausen wish, following the older commentators. It is not said what ought to happen, but what, according to the apostle’s conception, ensued as a necessary and essential consequence of the ἱκανὸν κ . τ . λ . (Kühner, II. p. 564). The χαρίσασθαι , however, is not at variance with the reference to the adulterer (because forgiveness belongs to God
Bleek, Neander), for what is here spoken of in a general way is only the pardon, which the church imparts in reference to the offence produced in it, the pardon of Christian brethren (Eph_4:32; Col_3:20).
τῇ περισσοτέρᾳ λύπῃ ] through the higher degree of affliction, which, namely, would be the consequence of the refusal of pardon, and certainly of the eventual complete excommunicatio.
καταποθῇ ] Comp. 1Co_15:54; 1Pe_5:8. This being swallowed up is explained by some, of dying (Grotius, according to his view of an illness of the sinner), by others, of suicide, or of apostasy from Christianity (the latter is held by Theodoret, Pelagius, and others, also Flatt; Kypke and Stolz, following Chrysostom, Theophylact, and others, leave a choice between the two); or as conveying a hint that the λύπη bordering on despair might drive him into the world, and he might be devoured by its prince (Olshausen). The latter point: “by the prince of the world,” is quite arbitrarily imported. The sadness (conceived as a hostile animal) is what swallows up. The context gives nothing more precise than the notion: to be brought by the sadness to despair, to the abandoning of all hope and of all striving after the Christian salvation.[142] Comp. on καταπίνειν in the sense of destroying, Jacobs, Animadv. in Athen. p. 315.
[142] The ὁ τοιοῦτος repeated at the end, in itself superfluous, has the tone of compassion.