Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 2 Corinthians 10:15 - 10:15
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
15, 16. οὐκ εἰς τὰ ἄμετρα καυχώμενοι … εἰς τὰ ἕτοιμα καυχήσασθαι. A long and rather obscure sentence, which it is more simple to connect with 2Co 10:14 than with 2Co 10:13. There need not be more than a comma, and certainly should not be a full stop (A.V.), at the end of 2Co 10:14. Not glorying beyond our measure (as in 2Co 10:13) in other men’s labours, but having hope that, as your faith groweth, we shall be magnified in you, according to our province unto still greater abundance, so as to preach the Gospel unto the regions beyond you, and not to glory in another man’s province of things ready to our hand. Seeing that in coming to Corinth he has not come out of his own sphere into that of other people, he is not claiming what is really the work of others (comp. Rom 15:20); whereas his opponents, by setting themselves up as teachers in Corinth have been glorying in another man’s province of what he did and not they: quum Paulus militasset, illi triumphum agebant (Calvin). And he hopes that, as the Corinthians grow in faith, he will be magnified among them in his own sphere, so that his influence will extend, and he will be able to preach the Gospel beyond them with a recommendation. S. Paul may already have had thoughts of Rome and Spain (Rom 15:24; Rom 15:28). But he could not easily work still further westward, while Corinth was in so unsatisfactory a state; and hence the qualification αὐξανομένης τῆς πίστεως ὑμῶν. Their progress in the faith was necessary for the spread of the faith to others. It is possible to take ἐν ὑμῖν with αὐξανομένης (Luther, Calvin): but it has much more point if we take it with μεγαλυνθῆναι. It is in them and through them, that his powers are enlarged, if their faith increases. For μεγαλυνθῆναι ἐν comp. Php 1:20. For the thought comp. 2Co 3:2-3.
Dr Kennedy points out that εἰς τὰ ὑπερέκεινα ὑμῶν fits Rome and Spain much better, if we suppose that this is part of a letter written from Ephesus (whence the painful letter was written), than if we suppose it to be part of a letter written from Macedonia. To a person in Macedonia ‘the regions beyond Corinth’ would be in the South, not in the West. Neither in classical Greek, nor elsewhere in Biblical Greek, is ὑπερέκεινα found. It is perhaps colloquial for ἐπέκεινα, which is quite classical (Act 7:43 and LXX.). For καυχ. εἰς comp. διὰ τὸ καυχ. εἰς τὴν ἡλικίαν αὐτοῦ (Arist. Pol. v. x. 16).