For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults: I fear, lest, when I come - I think the present time is used here for the past; the apostle seems most evidently to be giving them the reason why he had not come to them according to his former purposes, and why he sent Titus and his companion. He was afraid to come at that time lest he should have found them perverted from the right way, and he be obliged to make use of his apostolical rod, and punish the offenders; but, feeling towards them the heart of a tender father, he was unwilling to use the rod; and sent the first epistle to them, and the messengers above mentioned, being reluctant to go himself till he had satisfactory evidence that their divisions were ended, and that they had repented for and put away the evils that they had committed; and that he should not be obliged to bewail them who had sinned so abominably, and had not repented for their crimes. If this verse be understood in this way, all difficulty will vanish; otherwise, what is here said does seem to contradict what is said, 2 Corinthians 7:6, 2 Corinthians 7:16, etc.; as well as many things both in the eighth and ninth Chapter s.
Debates, envyings - From these different expressions, which are too plain to need interpretation, we see what a distracted and divided state the Church at Corinth must have been in. Brotherly love and charity seem to have been driven out of this once heavenly assembly. These debates, etc., are precisely the opposites to that love which the apostle recommends and explains by its different properties in the 13th chapter of his first epistle.
Mr. Wakefield translates the original thus: strifes, rivalries, passions, provocations, slanders, whisperings, swellings, quarrels.