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2Co_7:2. Having finished his exhortation, 2Co_6:14 to 2Co_7:1, he now repeats the same request with which in 2Co_6:13 he had introduced that exhortation ( πλατύνθητε ὑμεῖς ), using the corresponding expression χωρήσατε ἡμᾶς : take us, i.e. receive us, give us room in your heart (comp. Mar_2:2; Joh_2:6; Joh_21:25; 4Ma_7:6; Herod. iv. 61; Thuc. ii. 17. 3; Eurip. Hipp. 941), and then adds at once (without the medium of a γάρ ) in lively emotion the reason why they had no cause whatever to refuse him this request ( στενοχωρεῖσθαι ἐν τοῖς σπλάγχνοις , comp. 2Co_6:12). Chrysostom rightly as to substance explains the figurative χωρήσατε by φιλήσατε and Theophylact: δέξασθε ἡμᾶς πλατέως , καὶ μὴ στενοχωρώμεθα ἐν ὑμῖν . Comp. Theodoret. So also most of the later commentators, though the meaning was often limited in an arbitrary way (comp. Rosenmüller, Stolz, Flatt, and Pelagius), e.g.: give ear to us, and the like. Others take it: understand us rightly (Bengel, Storr, Bretschneider, Rückert, de Wette). Unobjectionable from a linguistic point of view (see Wetstein, ad Mat_19:11); but in the exhortation of 2Co_7:1 there was nothing to be misunderstood, just as little as for the readers in the disclosure that follows (to which de Wette refers it); and if Paul, as Rückert thinks, had had it in his mind that the measures of his first Epistle had been judged unfavourably, he could not have expected any reader to gather this from the simple χωρήσατε ἡμᾶς , especially as in what follows the idea of the effects of the first Epistle is quite kept at a distance by οὐδένα ἐπλεονεκτήσαμεν .[255]
οὐδένα ἠδικήσαμεν κ . τ . λ .] This is no doubt aimed at hostile calumniations of the apostle and his companions. Some one must have said: They act wrongly towards the people! they ruin them, they enrich themselves from them! It is impossible to prove that ἐφθείραμεν applies exactly to the corruptela quae fit per falsam doctrinam (Calvin and most, following the Fathers; just as Hofmann also refers it to the inward injuring of the persons themselves, 1Co_3:17); the way in which the word is associated with ἠδικήσ . and ἐπλεονεκτ . is rather in favour of a reference to the outward position. In how many ways not known to us more precisely may the apostle and his fellow-labourers have been accused of such a ruining of others! How easily might such slanders be based on the strictness of his moral requirements, his sternness in punishing, his zeal for collections, his lodging with members of the church, the readiness to make sacrifices which he demanded, and the like! Probably his prosecution and administration of the collections would be especially blackened by this reproach of πλεονεκτεῖν . Comp. 2Co_12:17-18. Rückert refers all three words to the contents of the former Epistle: “with what I wrote you, I have done no one wrong,” etc.; so that ἠδικ . would refer to the severe punishment of the incestuous person, ἐφθείρ . to his delivery over to Satan, and ἐπλεονεκτ . to the control which Paul by this discipline seemed desirous to exercise over the transgressor and over the church. But if his readers were to know of this reference to his former Epistle, he must have expressed it (the reader could not guess it). Besides, the word ἐπλεονεκτ . is against this view, for in the N. T. it denotes overreaching for one’s own benefit as an act of covetousness properly so called, provided the context (as in 2Co_2:11, by ὑπὸ τοῦ Σατανᾶ ) does not furnish a more general reference. And, moreover, those acts of discipline, to which Paul is supposed to refer, were acts so completely personal on the part of the apostle, that the plural expression in our passage would be quite unsuitabl.
οὐδένα ] in the consciousness of innocence is with great emphasis prefixed three times; but we cannot, with Rückert, infer from this that the incestuous person is concealed under it. Comp. πάντες and πάντα , and 1Co_12:29; 1Co_13:7; Buttm. neut. Gram. p. 341 [E. T. 398].
[255] This also in opposition to de Wette’s way of completing the thought: “Impute no evil designs to me in writing the first Epistle. For such imputation I have given you no occasion in my apostolic conduct. I have wronged no one,” etc.