2 Corinthians 12:16 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

But be it so, I did not burden you. — The pronoun is again emphatic. The word for “burden” is not the same as in 2 Corinthians 12:13-14, but puts the fact less figuratively. The abruptness of the sentence requires us to trace between the lines the under-currents of unexpressed thoughts. The extreme, almost jealous, sensitiveness of the Apostle’s nature leads him to imagine the cynical sneer with which these assertions of disinterested work would be received. “Be it so,” he hears them saying; “we admit that he, in his own person, when he was with us, made no demands on our purses; but what are we to think of this ‘collection for the saints’? How do we know into whose pockets that money will go? We know him to be subtle enough” (the adjective is that from which we get the “subtlety” of 2 Corinthians 4:2; 2 Corinthians 11:3) “to take us in somehow: what if the collection be a trap?” There is a specially taunting force in the Greek for “being crafty,” as taking the fact for granted, and assuming that it would inevitably lead on to some new development of that character in act.