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2Co_4:16. Διό ] namely, on account of the certainty expressed in 2Co_4:14 (partly elucidated in 2Co_4:15), in significant keeping with εἰδότες , and hence not to be referred back to the faith of the preachers, 2Co_4:13 (Hofmann).
οὐκ ἐκκακ .] as 2Co_4:1. The opposite of ἐκκακ . is: our inward man, i.e. our morally self-conscious personality, with the thinking and willing νοῦς and the life-principle of the πνεῦμα (see on Rom_7:22; Eph_3:16; comp. 1Pe_3:4), is renewed from day to day, i.e. it receives through the gracious efficacy of the divine Spirit continually new vigour and elevation, τῇ πίστει , τῇ ἐλπίδι , τῇ προθυμίᾳ , Chrysostom. But with this there is also the admission: even if our outward man, our phenomenal existence, our visible bodily nature, whose immediate condition of life is the ψυχή , is destroyed, i.e. is in process of being wasted away, of being swept off, namely, through the continual sufferings and persecutions, μαστιζόμενος , ἐλαυνόμενος , μυρία πάσχων δεινά , Chrysostom. For though the continual life-rescues reveal the life of Jesus in the body of the apostle (2Co_4:11), yet there cannot thereby be done away the gradually destructive physical influence of suffering on the bodily nature. There is here a noble testimony to the consciousness of a continuous independence of the development of spiritual life on the passivity of the body; but the view of Billroth, who finds in ἀνακαιν . the growth of the infinite, the true resurrection, is just as un-Pauline as is the opinion of an inward invisible body (Menken), or even of a corporeality of the soul (Tertullian). On the point whether the inward man includes in itself the germ of the resurrection of the body (Osiander), the N. T. says nothing. Rückert diverges wholly from the usual interpretation, and thinks that διὸ οὐκ ἐκκακ . is only an accessory, half parenthetical inference from what precedes, and that a new train of thought does not begin till ἀλλʼ : “I have that hope, and hence do not become despondent. But even if I did not possess it, supposing even that my outward man is actually dissolved,” etc. Against this it may be urged that οὐκ ἐκκακοῦμεν , ἀλλʼ κ . τ . λ . could not but present itself obviously to every reader as closely connected (we faint not, but), and that the whole interpretation is a consequence of Rückert’s erroneous exposition of 2Co_4:14. Hence Neander also gives a similar interpretation, but hesitatingly.
On διαφθείρεται , comp. Plato, Alc. i. p. 135 A: διαφθαρῆναι τὸ σῶμα .
The ἀλλʼ (at, on the contrary) in the apodosis, after a concessive conditional sentence, introduces with emphasis the opposite compensating relation; see Fritzsche, ad Rom. I. p. 374; Nägelsbach on the Iliad, p. 43, ed. 2; Baeumlein, Partik. p. 11.
ὁ ἔσωθεν ] the inward, inner man. Regarding adverbs in θεν with the same meaning as their primitives, see Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 128; Hartung, Kasus, p. 173.
ἡμέρᾳ καὶ ἡμέρᾳ ] day by day; καθʼ ἡμέραν , τὸ ἐφʼ ἡμέραν (Eur. Cycl. 336), in point of sense, for ever and ever, without interruption or standing still. A pure Hebraism, not found once in the LXX, formed after éåÉí åÈéåÉí ; comp. éåÉí éåÉí Est_3:4; Gen_39:10; Psa_68:20. See Vorst, Hebr. p. 307 f.
ἀνακαινοῦται ] Winer aptly remarks (Progr. de verbor. cum praepos. compos, in N. T. usu, III. p. 10), that in ἀνακαινοῦν , to renew, to refresh, the question does not arise, “utrum ea ipsa novitas, quae alicui rei conciliatur, jam olim adfuerit necne;” see on Col_3:10. Instead of ἀνακαινοῦν , the Greeks have only ἀνακαινίζειν (Heb_4:6), but the simple form is also classical.
The confession εἰ καὶ ὁ ἔξω κ . τ . λ … became a watchword of the martyrs. Comp. Cornelius a Lapide.