2 Corinthians 11:23-25 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Are they ministers of Christ? “St. Paul does not compare himself with the false teachers as an apostle, but as a minister of Christ simply. And to show how much he exceeded them in that inferior character, he mentions his labours in the ministry, and his sufferings undergone in his many journeys and voyages, for the sake of spreading the gospel. And from his account it appears, that none of the heroes of antiquity, however vehemently actuated by the love of fame, or of military glory or power, either did or suffered as much in the pursuit of their objects, as the Apostle Paul did and suffered for Christ and his gospel.” I am more so than they; in labours more abundant Sustained for a long series of years; in stripes above measure All endured for Christ and his cause. In prisons more frequent In the narrative of Paul's travels and sufferings, contained in the Acts, we only read of his being imprisoned once, before this epistle was written, namely, at Philippi. But doubtless many particulars of his life, besides the imprisonments here referred to, were omitted in that history, for the sake of brevity. In deaths oft Surrounding me in the most dreadful forms. Of the Jews five times received I In their synagogues, and before their courts of judgment; forty stripes, save one According to the law, punishment by stripes was restricted to forty, at one beating, Deuteronomy 25:3; but the whip with which these stripes were given, consisting of three separate cords, and each stroke being counted as three stripes, thirteen strokes made thirty-nine stripes, beyond which they never went. See Whitby. As the apostle, before his conversion, had been very active in inflicting this punishment on the disciples of Christ, he could not complain when he himself was treated in the same manner by the zealots for the law. Thrice was I beaten with rods By the Roman lictors or beadles, at the command of their superior magistrates. In his history, contained in the Acts, we find no mention made of his being punished with stripes, and only one instance occurs there of his being beaten with rods. See the margin. Once was I stoned Namely, at Lystra, at which time he was left for dead. Thrice I suffered shipwreck Before his voyage to Rome, in which he was shipwrecked at Malta; of these we have no account in the Acts. A night and a day I have been in the deep Probably floating on some part of a shipwrecked vessel, by which, possibly, he escaped to shore. This, it is likely, happened in one of the three shipwrecks mentioned in the preceding clause.