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I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you do bear with me.
Verse 1. My folly. So he calls his reciting his own praises, which commonly speaking, is looked upon as a piece of folly and vanity; though the apostle was constrained to do it, for the good of the souls committed to his charge. Challoner.
For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. For I promised you in marriage to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.
Verse 2. With the jealousy of God, or that came from God: it may also signify a great, or godly jealousy.—To present you, that is, the Church of Corinth, a chaste virgin to Christ, as the whole Catholic Church is called the chaste spouse of Christ. See Matthew 9:13. Revelation 21:2. Witham.—I cannot suffer these false prophets thus to destroy what has been prepared with so much labour, but I am not jealous for my own sake; it is for the honour of God; for I do not wish to prepare this spouse for myself, but for God. Tirinus.—It is a duty incumbent on me to preserve you in the purity of the faith you have received, to present you to him as a virgin, holy, and free from every spot or blemish, and hence arise my fear and solicitude, lest by insinuating and designing men, you suffer yourselves to be drawn away from the simplicity of your faith in Christ Jesus, the Lord.
But I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve in his craftiness, so your minds might be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Verse 3. So your minds shall be corrupted by those false teachers, from the simplicity in Christ, from the sincerity and purity of the gospel doctrine. Witham.
For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we didn’t preach, or if you receive a different spirit which you didn’t receive, or a different “good news” which you didn’t accept, you put up with that well enough.
Verse 4. You might well bear with him. These new teachers pretended at least to preach only the doctrine of Christ. Saint Paul tells them, they might in some measure be excused, if they preached a new doctrine, or another gospel that brought them greater blessings, or another Spirit accompanied with greater spiritual gifts, than they had already received by his preaching. But I think, and may say, I have nothing less than the greatest apostles, and you have received the same blessings from me, as others from them. Witham.
For I reckon that I am not at all behind the very best apostles.
Verse 5. For I suppose. Many understand this as spoken ironically, and alluding to the false apostles, who called themselves great. But it ought rather to be understood in a literal sense, that God had performed as many and great miracles by his hands, as by any of the apostles. Saint Paul here wishes to refute those who called themselves the disciples of Peter, and other apostles. Calmet.
But though I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not unskilled in knowledge. No, in every way we have been revealed to you in all things.
Verse 6. Though I be rude in speech, (as S. Jerom also thought) in my expressions in the Greek tongue, yet not in knowledge, the chief or only thing to be regarded. Nay, Saint Paul’s adversaries acknowledged that his letters were weighty and strong. chapter 10 verse 11. Saint John Chrysostom in many places, and Saint Augustine l. iv. de Doct. Christiana, c. vi. and vii. tom. 3. p. 68. and seq. shews at large the solid rhetoric and eloquence of Saint Paul, even in this and the next chapter. Witham.