The Boast Ends in a Basket

“Folly” is aphrosyne, senselessness, the key word of the speech to come, as Paul plays the fool on purpose (11:16–21, 12:11). “Bear with” is anechomai, to put up with, and the last clause can be read as a request or as a dry statement: “indeed you do bear with me”.

“Jealous” is zeloo, the word for God’s jealousy over Israel in Exodus 34:14, a husband’s exclusive claim. Paul casts himself as the bride’s father, who has betrothed her and must bring her to the wedding untouched; in Jewish custom a betrothal was already binding.

“Beguiled” is exapatao, to deceive thoroughly, a compound of the word Eve used in Genesis 3:13 in the Greek, “The serpent beguiled me”. “Subtilty” is panourgia, craftiness, literally readiness to do anything at all.

“He that cometh” is present tense, the visitor who keeps turning up, a way of casting the rival teachers as intruders. “Ye might well bear with him” is biting irony; many manuscripts have a present tense, “you put up with it beautifully”.

“The very chiefest apostles” is hyperlian apostoloi, super-apostles, an ironic coinage found only here and in 12:11. “Not a whit behind” is hystereo, to lag behind, the word for falling short of a standard.

“Rude” is idiotes, an amateur, a layman, the word of 1 Corinthians 14:16. In a city that prized trained orators, Paul concedes he is untrained in rhetoric, though his letters show considerable skill with it. “Throughly” is the old spelling of thoroughly.

“Freely” is dorean, as a gift, without charge. Greek philosophers argued over whether a teacher should take fees; Socrates was admired for refusing them and the sophists sneered at for charging. Paul had explained his own refusal at length in 1 Corinthians 9:12–18.

“Robbed” is sylao, to plunder, used of stripping the armour from a fallen enemy. “Wages” is opsonion, a soldier’s ration money, the word of 1 Corinthians 9:7 and of Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin”. The military picture of chapter 10 is still running.

“Chargeable” is katanarkao, to be a dead weight, from narke, numbness, the torpedo fish whose touch numbs; Paul uses it only in this letter (12:13–14). The brethren from Macedonia are probably Silas and Timothy, who arrived in Corinth with support (Acts 18:5, Philippians 4:15).

“Stop me” is phrasso, to fence in or block, as a road is barricaded or a mouth is stopped (Romans 3:19). “The regions of Achaia” widens the boast to the whole province, so no one near Corinth could say Paul had lived at their expense.

Two words in Greek frame a whole accusation, “Why? Because I do not love you?”, and three answer it, ho theos oiden, God knows. The brevity is the reply: Paul does not argue his love, he calls a witness.

“Cut off occasion” uses aphorme, the base of operations of 5:12: Paul denies his rivals a foothold. They apparently wanted him to take pay so they could claim to work on the same terms; by refusing, he keeps a difference they cannot match.

“False apostles”, pseudapostoloi, may be Paul’s own coinage, since it appears in no earlier Greek. “Transforming themselves” is metaschematizo, to change the outward form, the schema, not the substance, a different verb from the metamorphoo of 3:18.

No Old Testament text says Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, but Jewish writings such as the Life of Adam and Eve tell of Satan taking an angel’s shining form to deceive Eve a second time. Coming straight after the serpent of verse 3, the allusion seems deliberate.

“Ministers” is diakonoi, the title Paul claimed for himself in 3:6 and 6:4, so the rivals are counterfeiting his very job description. “Whose end shall be according to their works” is a judgment formula, close to Psalm 62:12 and Romans 2:6.

“I say again” picks up verse 1 after the long interruption about money and false apostles. If he must be taken for a fool, Paul asks to be received as one, so that he too may boast mikron ti, the smallest possible amount.

A rare disclaimer: this speech is not “after the Lord”, not how the Lord would talk, the reverse of 1 Corinthians 7:10, “not I, but the Lord”. “Confidence” is hypostasis again, the assurance word of 9:4.

“After the flesh” here means about fleshly things: ancestry, credentials, achievements, the very list that follows in verse 22. Many boast of such things, and Paul joins them for the length of a single speech, knowing exactly what he is doing.

“Gladly” is hedeos, with pleasure. The sting is in the word for “wise”, phronimoi, sensible, the word Paul had already used with heavy sarcasm in 1 Corinthians 4:10, “ye are wise in Christ”.

“Devour” is the verb Jesus used of scribes who “devour widows’ houses” (Mark 12:40). A blow to the face was the classic public insult, dealt to the prophet Micaiah (1 Kings 22:24) and ordered against Paul himself by the high priest (Acts 23:2).

“I speak as concerning reproach” is literally “I say it to my shame”, a sardonic confession: we were too weak to treat you like that. The bracketed “I speak foolishly” is the fool reminding the audience that he knows he is on stage.

Three names, each heavier than the last: Hebrews, by language and upbringing; Israelites, by covenant membership; the seed of Abraham, by promise. Paul lists similar credentials in Philippians 3:5, “of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews”.

“I speak as a fool” here is paraphroneo, to be out of one’s mind, found only here in the New Testament and stronger than the earlier words: claiming “I am more” is so outrageous that Paul calls it madness. “In deaths oft” means repeated brushes with death, one of which 1:8–10 described.

Deuteronomy 25:3 set forty lashes as the maximum, and the synagogue gave thirty-nine so as never to exceed it by miscounting. The Mishnah describes the procedure, a third of the strokes on the chest and two thirds on the back. None of these five floggings is recorded in Acts.

Beating with rods was a Roman punishment, and one of the three was at Philippi (Acts 16:22–23), illegally, since Paul was a citizen. The stoning was at Lystra (Acts 14:19). All three shipwrecks came before the one in Acts 27, which was still ahead of him. “The deep” is bythos, the open sea.

“Perils” comes eight times in a row, a drumbeat in Greek. Robbers were notorious in the Taurus passes between Tarsus and the interior, a road Paul had walked. “Mine own countrymen” and “the heathen” are literally “race” and “nations”, genos and ethne.

“Weariness and painfulness” is kopos kai mochthos, toil and hardship, the pair of 1 Thessalonians 2:9, where Paul worked night and day at his trade so as not to burden anyone. The cold was real enough that 2 Timothy 4:13 has him asking for a cloak left at Troas.

“Beside those things that are without” may mean the things left unmentioned or the outward troubles. “That which cometh upon me” is epistasis, a crowding in, pressure like a mob’s. “Care” is merimna, the anxious concern Jesus warned his disciples against in Matthew 6:25, now carried for others.

“Offended” is skandalizo, made to stumble, and “burn” is pyroo, to be set on fire, with grief or indignation. Paul had written in 1 Corinthians 8:13 that he would never eat meat rather than make a brother stumble; here another’s stumbling sets him alight.

Paul takes his critics’ own word from 10:10, astheneia, weakness, and makes it his banner. It becomes the key word of 12:5–10, where the whole argument lands on “when I am weak, then am I strong”.

An oath with a doxology folded into it, as in Romans 9:5, and a close cousin of Galatians 1:20, “before God, I lie not”. The solemn tone sits oddly beside the undignified escape that follows, which may be exactly why Paul swears to it.

Aretas IV ruled the Nabataean kingdom from Petra from about 9 BC to AD 40. “Governor” is ethnarches, the head of an ethnic community, perhaps the leader of the Nabataeans in Damascus. Acts 9:23–24 says the Jews watched the gates; the two accounts may describe cooperating parties.

Houses were built into city walls, as Rahab’s was at Jericho, where the spies went down “by a cord through the window” (Joshua 2:15). “Basket” is sargane, a braided rope basket. Roman soldiers won a crown for being first up an enemy wall; Paul’s credential is being let down one.