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15. οἴδατε δὲ. The δὲ suggests, with the same delicacy of love, that their earlier gifts would have sufficed to assure him of their fellowship with him. “You have now done well; but indeed you had repeatedly, and to a rare degree, shewn your sympathy before.”
καὶ ὑμεῖς. You as well as I.
Φιλιππήσιοι. This form of the civic adjective appears also in “Titles” of the Epistle, and in “Subscriptions.” Other forms (in secular Greek) are Φιλιππεῖς, Φιλιππηνοί. Probably the Latin “colonists” called themselves Philippenses, which is the word used here in the Vulg. So Corinthienses, Romanenses, Sicilienses, were foreign residents in Corinth, &c. (See Facciolati, Lexicon, s.v. Corinthiensis.) And this word may have grown out of that, for Greek tends to represent the Latin -ens- by -ησ-: so Clemens, Κλήμης.
ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου. In the beginning of his Gospel-work in their region. For this use of the word εὐαγγέλιον see above Php 1:5; Php 1:7; Php 1:12, Php 4:3. Cp. 2Co 10:14, ἄχρι καὶ ὑμῶν ἐφθάσαμεν ἐν τῷ εὐ. τοῦ χριστοῦ.
ὅτε ἐξῆλθον ἀπὸ Μακεδονίας. “On my leaving Macedonia”; not “when I had left,” for he proceeds to refer to an incident at Thessalonica, in Macedonia. He means the general period of his removal from Macedonia (Roman Northern Greece) into Achaia (Roman Southern Greece). For the narrative, see Act 17:1-15. He is looking back now over some ten years.
οὐδεμία … ἐκκλησία. We gather that thus early the Gospel had taken root in more than one or two spots in Macedonia, not counting Philippi and Thessalonica. Acts 16. (and Act 17:1) evidently gives only the leading specimen of the first work of the evangelists.
εἰς λόγον. “As regards”; literally, “to the account of.” Lightfoot quotes Thucyd., iii. 46, ἐς χρημάτων λόγον ἰσχυούσαις (πόλεσι), “states strong in regard to wealth”; and Demosth. (de F. L., p. 385), εἰς ἀρετῆς λόγον.
δόσεως καὶ λήμψεως. A recognized formula for money transactions, where one gives and another takes. Chrysostom explains the words as meaning εἰς δόσεως τῶν σαρκικῶν καὶ λήψ. τῶν πνευματικῶν—the Philippians gaining blessing in return for their alms. But this misses the point; St Paul is speaking exclusively of practical liberality. See Lightfoot here.