For we stretch not ourselves... as though we reached not unto you. — Some of the better MSS. omit the negative, and then the sentence must be taken as a question: “Are we over-reaching” (i.e., transgressing boundaries), “as though you were not within the limit assigned to us?”
For we are come as far as to you also. — The word for “come” (not the usual verb) is one which almost always in the New Testament, as in classical Greek, carries with it the sense of anticipation, “getting before others.” (See Note on Matthew 12:28.) And this is obviously St. Paul’s meaning. “We were the first to come,” he says, “as working within our limits; the very fact that we did so come being a proof of it.” They (his rivals) came afterwards, and were intruders. On Corinth, as the then limit of his work, see Note on the preceding verse.