2 Corinthians 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul asks the Corinthians to put up with a little "foolishness" from him, because he is jealous for them with a jealousy that comes from God, having promised them to one husband, and he fears they are being led away from simple devotion to Christ by preachers of a different Jesus. He defends taking no pay from them, calls his rivals false apostles who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ, and notes that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Then, speaking in the manner of a fool, he matches their boasting with a list of his own credentials and, above all, his sufferings: beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks, dangers, hunger, and the daily weight of concern for all the churches. He ends by saying he will boast only of what shows his weakness, and tells how he escaped Damascus lowered in a basket through a window.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • Paul wishes the Corinthians would bear with him in a little foolishness
   • Paul tells them to bear with him
2. 11:2
   • Paul is jealous over the Corinthians with a godly jealousy
   • Paul betrothed the Corinthians to one husband
   • Paul's purpose is to present the Corinthians to Christ as a chaste virgin
3. 11:3
   • Paul is afraid
   • Paul fears that the Corinthians' minds may be corrupted away from the simplicity that is toward Christ
   • The serpent deceived Eve
   • The serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness
4. 11:4
   • If someone who comes preaches another Jesus whom Paul and his companions did not preach, the Corinthians bear with it
   • Paul and his companions did not preach that other Jesus
   • If the Corinthians receive a different spirit which they did not receive, they bear with it
   • If they receive a different gospel which they did not accept, they bear with it
   • The Corinthians bear with such a person readily
5. 11:5
   • Paul reckons that he was in no respect behind the very chiefest apostles
6. 11:6
   • Paul is unskilled in speech
   • Paul is not unskilled in knowledge
   • Paul and his companions have been made thoroughly manifest to the Corinthians in all things
7. 11:7
   • Paul asks whether he committed a sin
   • Paul humbled himself
   • Paul humbled himself so that the Corinthians might be exalted
   • Paul preached the gospel of God to the Corinthians without charge
8. 11:8
   • Paul robbed other churches
   • Paul took wages from other churches in order to serve the Corinthians
9. 11:9
   • Paul was present with the Corinthians
   • Paul was in need while with them
   • Paul was a burden to no one
   • Brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what Paul lacked
   • Paul kept himself from being burdensome to the Corinthians in everything
   • Paul will keep himself from being burdensome to them
10. 11:10
    • The truth of Christ is in Paul
    • No one shall stop Paul of this boasting in the regions of Achaia
11. 11:11
    • Paul asks why
    • Paul asks whether it is because he does not love them
    • God knows
12. 11:12
    • Paul will keep doing what he is doing
    • Paul acts to cut off the opportunity of those who want an opportunity
    • Paul acts so that in the matter they boast of they may be found even as Paul and his companions
13. 11:13
    • Such men are false apostles
    • Such men are deceitful workers
    • Such men disguise themselves as apostles of Christ
14. 11:14
    • This is no marvel
    • Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light
15. 11:15
    • It is no great thing if Satan's ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness
    • Their end will be according to their works
16. 11:16
    • Paul says again that no one should think him a fool
    • If they do think so, they should receive him as a fool
    • Paul's purpose is that he too may boast a little
17. 11:17
    • What Paul speaks he does not speak according to the Lord
    • Paul speaks as in foolishness
    • Paul speaks in this confidence of boasting
18. 11:18
    • Many boast according to the flesh
    • Paul will boast also
19. 11:19
    • The Corinthians gladly bear with fools
    • The Corinthians are wise
20. 11:20
    • The Corinthians bear with it if someone enslaves them
    • They bear with it if someone devours them
    • They bear with it if someone takes from them
    • They bear with it if someone exalts himself
    • They bear with it if someone strikes them in the face
21. 11:21
    • Paul speaks by way of dishonor
    • Paul speaks as though he and his companions had been weak
    • Whatever anyone is bold in, Paul is bold also
    • Paul says he speaks in foolishness
22. 11:22
    • Paul asks whether they are Hebrews
    • Paul is a Hebrew
    • Paul asks whether they are Israelites
    • Paul is an Israelite
    • Paul asks whether they are the seed of Abraham
    • Paul is of the seed of Abraham
23. 11:23
    • Paul asks whether they are ministers of Christ
    • Paul says he speaks as one out of his mind
    • Paul is more a minister of Christ than they
    • Paul has been in labors more abundantly
    • Paul has been in beatings beyond measure
    • Paul has been in prisons more frequently
    • Paul has been in deaths often
24. 11:24
    • Paul received from the Jews five times the forty lashes minus one
25. 11:25
    • Paul was beaten with rods three times
    • Paul was stoned once
    • Paul was shipwrecked three times
    • Paul spent a night and a day in the deep
26. 11:26
    • Paul has been in journeys often
    • Paul has been in dangers from rivers
    • Paul has been in dangers from robbers
    • Paul has been in dangers from his own countrymen
    • Paul has been in dangers from Gentiles
    • Paul has been in dangers in the city
    • Paul has been in dangers in the wilderness
    • Paul has been in dangers at sea
    • Paul has been in dangers among false brothers
27. 11:27
    • Paul has been in labor and hardship
    • Paul has been in sleeplessness often
    • Paul has been in hunger and thirst
    • Paul has been without food often
    • Paul has been in cold and nakedness
28. 11:28
    • Besides the outward things, there is what comes upon Paul daily
    • Paul has the care of all the churches
29. 11:29
    • Paul asks who is weak while he is not weak
    • Paul asks who is made to stumble while he does not burn
30. 11:30
    • If Paul must boast, he will boast of the things that concern his weakness
31. 11:31
    • The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ knows that Paul does not lie
    • The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is blessed forever
32. 11:32
    • In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes with a garrison
    • The governor sought to seize Paul
33. 11:33
    • Paul was let down through a window in a basket by the wall
    • Paul escaped the governor's hands

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

The "folly" is the stretch of self-praise Paul is about to launch into, which runs to the end of chapter 12. In Greek and Roman culture praising yourself was considered crude, and a speaker who had to do it used recognized conventions to excuse himself: claiming he had been forced into it, or calling himself a fool for doing it. Paul uses those conventions and keeps reminding his readers that he knows how the speech sounds.

11:2

Paul casts himself as the father of the bride. In Jewish practice betrothal was arranged well before the wedding and was already legally binding, and the father was responsible for guarding the girl in the interval and then handing her over to the husband. "Espoused" means betrothed, not married. The bride here is the Corinthian congregation as a group, not individual believers.

11:3

"Subtilty" in 1611 English meant craftiness or cunning, without the shading of delicacy we now hear in "subtle." "Simplicity" likewise meant singleness, being aimed wholly at one object, not being simple-minded. The story of the serpent and Eve is Genesis 3.

11:4

"Good news" means the true story about Jesus. Paul used those words all the time. It is the message he traveled everywhere to tell people.

11:5

"Apostle" is a Greek word meaning one who is sent, a commissioned representative. "The very chiefest apostles" translates a phrase Paul seems to have coined, something like super-apostles, and the tone is sarcastic. Readers disagree about whom he means: the rival missionaries who have arrived in Corinth, or the original apostles in Jerusalem whose authority those rivals were invoking.

11:6

"Rude" here means untrained or unpolished, not impolite. Public speaking was a competitive art in Greek cities, and audiences judged a teacher by his delivery as much as his content. The complaint against Paul, which he quotes back at the Corinthians earlier in the letter, was that his letters were weighty but that in person he was unimpressive to listen to.

11:7

Traveling teachers made their living either by charging fees or by attaching themselves to a wealthy patron. Paul instead supported himself by manual work, which people of standing in Corinth regarded as demeaning. So working for nothing looked to some Corinthians like an insult to them, or like an admission that his teaching was not worth paying for.

11:8

"Robbed" translates a word used of plundering a city or stripping a defeated enemy, and Paul is deliberately overstating for effect. The word behind "wages" is the term for a soldier's pay and rations.

11:9

Macedonia was the Roman province covering northern Greece, home to the churches at Philippi and Thessalonica. Paul took support from those churches while refusing it from Corinth, which is part of what the Corinthians resented.

11:10

Achaia was the Roman province covering southern Greece, with Corinth as its capital city. Paul means the whole province, not just the one town.

11:13

"Transforming themselves" means disguising themselves, like actors putting on costumes to look like someone else.

11:14

"Angel" simply means messenger. Jewish writings of the period tell the story of Genesis 3 with the detail that Satan appeared to Eve in the brightness of an angel in order to deceive her, which connects this line back to verse 3.

11:18

"After the flesh" means by ordinary human measures: ancestry, credentials, backing, achievements, the things a person would list to impress an audience. It has nothing to do with the body or with sexuality here.

11:19

This is sarcasm. The Corinthians prided themselves on being wise, and Paul turns that against them: if they are so discerning, why are they so patient with people he considers frauds?

11:20

"Devour" is a standard idiom for eating up someone's property, living at their expense. A slap to the face mattered less for the pain than for the humiliation; it was the recognized public gesture of contempt toward someone treated as an inferior, and the list builds up to it as the final indignity.

11:21

The Greek sentence is compressed and has been read in several ways. The likeliest sense is heavy sarcasm: Paul "admits" to the shameful weakness of never having exploited or bullied the Corinthians the way their new teachers do.

11:22

Three overlapping claims, each answering a boast his rivals have made. "Hebrew" probably marks someone raised speaking Hebrew or Aramaic rather than only Greek, so a Jew of the homeland rather than of the wider diaspora. "Israelite" names membership in the covenant people. "The seed of Abraham" claims descent from the patriarch and a share in the promises made to him.

11:23

What follows is a boast list with the values turned upside down. Wealthy Romans recorded their careers on stone inscriptions: offices held, honors won, cities benefited. Paul keeps the form and fills it with floggings, jails, hunger and near drownings, because his argument is that suffering for the message is the only credential that proves anything.

11:24

The law in Deuteronomy 25 set forty strokes as the absolute maximum, so later Jewish practice fixed the count at thirty-nine to make certain the limit was never passed by a miscount. This was a synagogue court's punishment, which means that over these years Paul was still presenting himself to Jewish communities and still accepting their discipline. The beating was severe enough that men sometimes died under it.

11:25

Beating with rods was a Roman civic punishment, carried out by the officers who attended a magistrate and carried bundles of rods for the purpose. Stoning was a Jewish method of execution, the crowd or the court throwing stones until the victim died. "In the deep" means adrift in open water after a wreck, most likely clinging to floating timber. None of these three shipwrecks is the famous one in Acts 27, which happened years later.

11:26

"Perils of waters" means rivers. Roads crossed streams at fords, which flooded without warning in the wet season and drowned travelers regularly. "False brethren" are people inside the Christian communities themselves, not outsiders, which is what makes them a separate category from the robbers and the hostile crowds.

11:27

"Fastings" is as ambiguous in the Greek as in English: it can mean deliberate religious fasting or simply having nothing to eat. The company it keeps in this list of hardships suggests involuntary hunger, though Paul may intend both. "Nakedness" means being without adequate clothing or shelter, exposure to the weather, not literal nudity.

11:28

Paul had helped start many groups of Jesus followers in many cities. He could not visit them all. So he worried about them every single day.

11:29

"Offended" in 1611 English meant tripped up, made to stumble into sin, not annoyed or insulted. What "I burn" refers to is left open in the Greek: it may be burning with distress and sympathy for the person who fell, or burning with anger at whoever pushed them.

11:30

"Infirmities" means weaknesses, the things that show a person is not strong.

11:31

Calling on God as witness was a formal oath, the strongest guarantee a person could give that what follows is true. "Which is blessed for evermore" is a set Jewish phrase of praise attached to God's name whenever it was spoken.

11:32

Aretas IV was king of the Nabateans, an Arab kingdom lying south and east of Damascus with its capital at Petra. He ruled from roughly 9 BC to AD 40. "Governor" translates the title ethnarch, an official responsible for Nabatean interests and the Nabatean community in the city; exactly how much authority he held over Damascus itself is unclear. The same escape is described in Acts 9.

11:33

Houses were often built into or against the city wall, with upper windows opening over the outside, so a window in the wall is a window in someone's house. The basket was a large woven hamper of the kind used to carry provisions. Paul ends the whole catalogue of his credentials with this: not a heroic act, but being handed down a wall like luggage.