Serving the Lord with all humility of mind... — The participle exactly answers to the epithet of the “servant” or “slave” of Christ which St. Paul so often uses of himself (Romans 1:1; Galatians 1:10; Philippians 1:1; Titus 1:1). The “tears,” too, are characteristic of the Apostle, whose intense sensitiveness and sympathy had not been hardened into a Stoic apathy, and therefore found vent in a form which the Stoic would have scorned as unmanly. (Comp. Acts 20:31; 2 Corinthians 2:4.) Epictetus (Enchirid. c. 2) barely allowed a follower of wisdom to mourn outwardly with those who mourned, and added the warning: “Take heed that thou mourn not inwardly.”
Temptations. — Better, trials — the word retaining its dominant meaning of troubles coming from without, rather than allurements to evil from within. The reference to the “lying in wait of the Jews” refers, of course, to something altogether distinct from the Demetrian tumult, and implies unrecorded sufferings. The Apostle’s life was never safe, and the air was thick with plots against it.