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A painted panel of the apostle Paul standing against a gold ground under a pointed arch, bearded and with a halo, in a pink cloak over a gold robe, holding a long sword point upward in his right hand and a black book against his side in his left.
Masaccio, Saint Paul, 1426. Public domain.

2 Corinthians 1:8 to 11 · Passage · Despair and Depression

We Despaired Even of Life

Paul's second letter to Corinth opens its story with a danger in the province of Asia.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown limited Paul's despair to the help of men, writing that he despaired “as far as human help or hope from man was concerned”.

2 Corinthians 1:9 BSB
Indeed, we felt we were under the sentence of death, in order that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead.
The passage
2 Corinthians 1:3 to 11
Book
2 Corinthians
Hold in memory
2 Corinthians 1:10

Summary

Paul tells the church at Corinth that the hardships he met in Asia weighed on him far past his strength, until he lost hope even of living. God rescued him from that danger, and Paul trusts God to rescue him again. He asks the Corinthians to help him by their prayers.

  • Paul leaves the trouble in Asia unnamed. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and Charles Spurgeon took it for the riot at Ephesus, Albert Barnes for a group of dangers, and Adam Clarke and Matthew Henry held it unknown.
  • The word Paul uses for the sentence of death, apokrima, stands only here in the New Testament.
  • Paul's verb for despaired, exaporeomai, stands only twice in the New Testament.

The God of All Comfort

Paul opens the letter with five verses on the comfort God gives.

We Despaired Even of Life studies 2 Corinthians 1:8 to 11, four verses in which the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians of what a danger in Asia did to him. It belongs to the trial of despair and depression because Paul names his own despair in plain words.

Its question is what Paul learned in that danger, and what part the prayers of other believers played in his rescue. It gives the Berean words of each step, Barnes's reading of the Greek word for the sentence, and the tenses of 2 Corinthians 1:10 in two versions.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
2 Corinthians 1:3BSB

The verse stands here because it names God as the source of the comfort Paul goes on to offer the church at Corinth.

In 2 Corinthians 1:4 Paul writes that God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble”.

Read 2 Corinthians

From the Burden to the Thanks of Many

Two verses tell of the danger, one of the rescue, and one of the prayers and the thanks.

Paul's account runs from a burden past his strength to the thanks of many.

  1. 1The burden

    The Berean words
    “We were under a burden far beyond our ability to endure”

  2. 2Despair of life

    The Berean words
    “so that we despaired even of life”

  3. 3The sentence

    The Berean words
    “under the sentence of death”

  4. 4The purpose

    The Berean words
    “that we would not trust in ourselves”

  5. 5Rescue past

    The Berean words
    “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril”

  6. 6Rescue to come

    The Berean words
    “He will yet again deliver us”

  7. 7The prayers

    The Berean words
    “as you help us by your prayers”

  8. 8The thanks

    The Berean words
    “many will give thanks on our behalf”

A chain of eight links from 2 Corinthians 1:8 to 11, each with its Berean words.

The prayers, The thanks

Burdened Beyond Strength

Paul names the province where the burden fell and the weight it laid on him.

Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832 to 1869), explained that “Asia” here means the part of Asia Minor “of which Ephesus was the capital”. He called Paul's phrase for the weight “one of Paul's common and very strong expressions”, which Paul uses again in 2 Corinthians 4:17.

The sense of Paul's verb for despaired is taught with its Hebrew counterpart in The Words Shachach and Exaporeomai.

He Has Delivered, and He Will Deliver

The Berean text and the King James Version give the rescue of 2 Corinthians 1:10 in different tenses.

The King James Version reads that God “delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver”, a present tense between the past and the future. Charles Spurgeon preached on that reading in his sermon The Tenses (1901) and taught that “God has delivered, does deliver and will yet deliver.”

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown noted that where the King James Version has a present tense, the oldest manuscripts read “will deliver”. The Berean text follows them, so that 2 Corinthians 1:10 gives a rescue already past and a rescue still to come.

The Help of Your Prayers

Paul expects the answer to the church's prayers to bring thanks from many.

Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), wrote on 2 Corinthians 1:11 that “Even an apostle felt the prayers of the Church of God necessary for his comfort and support.”

Paul's Thorn teaches the later passage in which Paul writes of “a thorn in my flesh”.

The Sentence of Death

Barnes and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown explain the sentence Paul felt he was under.

Barnes wrote that apokrima “means properly an answer, judicial response, or sentence; and is here synonymous with verdict”. In his reading Paul felt as if he were under that verdict “with no hope of acquittal”.

In their Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), Jamieson, Fausset and Brown wrote for Paul, “We had so given up all thoughts of life, that our only hope was fixed on the coming resurrection”.

“Note, God often brings his people into great straits, that they may apprehend their own insufficiency to help themselves, and may be induced to place their trust and hope in his all-sufficiency. Our extremity is God's opportunity.”

Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on 2 Corinthians 1:9Puritan

What Happened in Asia

Each of four readings of the trouble in Asia has its holders and an objection against it.

The Riot at EphesusJamieson, Fausset and Brown; Charles Spurgeon

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown referred the words to “the imminent risk of life which he ran in Ephesus” when Demetrius stirred up the crowd (Acts 19:23 to 41). Spurgeon, in his sermon The Power of Prayer and the Pleasure of Praise (1863), held the same of “the great riot at Ephesus”.

Against it, Barnes reports the objection of Whitby and Macknight that Paul “did not go into the theater” and so incurred no such risk of his life. Luke records that the disciples would not allow him to go before the assembly (Acts 19:30).

A Deadly SicknessHenry Alford, as Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report him

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report that Henry Alford thought the danger at Ephesus too slight for Paul's words, and that Alford “supposes Paul refers to some deadly sickness which he had suffered under”.

Against it, J. J. Lias, in Second Corinthians for the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1897), wrote of Paul's word for despaired, “This expression confirms the idea of a plot to kill the Apostle.”

A Group of Dangers in AsiaAlbert Barnes

Barnes proposed that Paul meant “the group of calamities to which he had been exposed in Asia”. He named the riot, the fight with wild beasts at Ephesus (1 Corinthians 15:32) and “the plots of the Jews against him”, for which he cited Acts 20:3. Acts 20:3 sets that plot in Greece, when Paul “was about to sail for Syria”, and the trials of Paul's years in Asia that came “through the plots of the Jews” stand at Acts 20:19.

Against it, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the wild beasts of 1 Corinthians 15:32 as the men who opposed Paul in 1 Corinthians 16:9.

The Trouble Left UnnamedAdam Clarke; Matthew Henry

Clarke wrote, “To what part of his history the apostle refers we know not”, and listed four readings, among them a persecution recorded nowhere else. Henry judged that “It is not certain what particular troubles in Asia are here referred to”.

Against it, Barnes judged that “There is every mark of freshness and recentness about this event”, and that Paul referred to a danger “from which he had been lately delivered”.

Sharers in Comfort

Paul ends his praise of God's comfort with a sure hope for the church.

In 2 Corinthians 1:7 Paul grounds that hope in what the Corinthians share with him, “just as you share in our sufferings, so also you will share in our comfort”.

Sources

Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.

  1. STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
  2. STEP Bible brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the Strong's glosses.
  3. Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on 2 Corinthians 1:8 to 9.
  4. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on 2 Corinthians 1:8 to 10.
  5. J. J. Lias, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1897), on 2 Corinthians 1:8.
  6. The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611), 2 Corinthians 1:10.
  7. Charles Spurgeon, The Power of Prayer and the Pleasure of Praise, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon 507 (1863)
  8. Charles Spurgeon, The Tenses, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon 2718 (1901)
  9. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Corinthians 1:8 to 9.
  10. Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Corinthians 1:8 and 1:11.

Every cited work: the sources registry →

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