2nd Corinthians Chapter 11 verse 5 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 5. - For. It cannot be that you received this rival teacher as being so much superior to me; for, etc. I suppose. Again, like the Latin censeo or opinor, with a touch of irony. I was not a whit behind; in no respect have I come short of. The very chiefest apostles. The word used by St. Paul for "very chiefest" is one which, in its strangeness, marks the vehemence of his emotion. It involves an indignant sense that he had been most disparagingly compared with other apostles, as though he were hardly a genuine apostle at all. Yet he reckons himself to have done as much as the "above exceedingly" - or, as it might be expressed, the "out and out," "extra-super," or "super-apostolic," apostles. There is here no reflection whatever on the twelve; he merely means that, even if any with whom he was uufavourably contrasted were "apostles ten times over," he can claim to be in the front rank with them. This is no more than he has said with the utmost earnestness in 1 Corinthians 15:10; Galatians 2:6. There is no self-assertion here; but, in consequence of the evil done by his detractors, St. Paul, with an utter sense of distaste, is forced to say the simple truth.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(5) For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.--The verb with which the sentence opens is the same as the "I think," "I reckon," which characterises these chapters, and which, being characteristic, ought to be retained. I reckon I have not fallen short of those apostles-extraordinary. The whole tone of the passage ought to have made it impossible for any commentator to imagine that the words referred to Peter and James and John as the pillars of the Church of Jerusalem (Galatians 2:9). Of them he speaks, even in his boldest moments, with respect, even where respect is mingled with reproof. He is glad to remember how they gave to him and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. He presents himself at Jerusalem a few months after writing these words, and almost submissively follows the counsel which James gives him (Acts 21:26). It is, accordingly, simply the insanity of controversy to imagine that these words have any bearing on the question of the primacy of St. Peter. Those whom he holds up to scorn with an almost withering irony, as "apostles-extraordinary" (he coins a word which literally means, "these extra-special or over-extra apostles"), are the false teachers, claiming to stand in a special relation to Christ, to be His Apostles--perhaps, also, to have a double title to the name, as delegates of the Church of Jerusalem. Of these he speaks more fully in 2Corinthians 11:13.