2nd Corinthians Chapter 1 verse 3 Holy Bible

2nd Corinthians 1 : 3 Bible Verse Songs

• Jesus by Phil Wickham
• Comforter by Cece Winans

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 3. - Blessed be God (Ephesians 1:3). This outburst of thanksgiving was meant to repress the relief brought to the overcharged feelings of the apostle by the arrival of Titus, with news respecting the mixed, but on the whole good, effect produced at Corinth by the severe remarks of his first letter. It is characteristic of the intense and impetuous rush of emotion which we often notice in the letters of St. Paul, that he does not here state the special grounds for this impassioned thanksgiving; he only touches upon it for a moment in 2 Corinthians 2:13, and does not pause to state it fully until 2 Corinthians 7:5-16. It is further remarkable that in this Epistle almost alone he utters no thanksgiving for the moral growth and holiness of the Church to which he is writing. This may be due to the fact that there was still so much to blame; but it more probably arose from the tumult of feeling which throughout this letter disturbs the regular flow of his thoughts. The ordinary "thanksgiving" for his readers is practically, though indirectly, involved in the gratitude which he expresses to God for the sympathy and communion which exists between himself and the Church of Corinth. Even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Greek is the same as in Ephesians 1:3, where, literally rendered, it is, "Blessed be the God and Father." The same phrase is found also in 1 Peter 1:3; Colossians 1:3. The meaning is not, "Blessed be the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (although the expression, "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ," occurs in Ephesians 1:17: comp. John 20:17), but "Blessed be God, who is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," and who is therefore "our Father" by adoption and redemption, as well as our God by creation. The Father of mercies. This corresponds to a Hebrew expression, and means that compassionateness is the most characteristic attribute of God, and emanation from him. He is the Source of all mercy; and mercy "Is an attribute of God himself." He is "full of compassion, and gracious, tong-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth" (Psalm 86:15). "The Law," says the Talmud, "begins and ends with an act of mercy. At its commencement God clothes the naked; at its close be buries the dead" ('Sotah,' f. 14, 1). Thus every chapter but one of the Koran is headed, "In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful;" and it is an Eastern expression to say of one that has died that. "he is taken to the mercy of the Merciful." Comp. "Father of glory," Ephesians 1:17; 1 Corinthians 2:8 ("of spirits," Hebrews 12:9; "of lights," James 1:17). The plural, "compassions," is perhaps a plural of excellence, "exceeding compassion" (Romans 12:1), and may be influenced by the Hebrew word rachamim, often literally rendered by St. Paul "bowels." The article in the Greek ("the Father of the compassions") specializes the mercy. The God of all comfort. So in 2 Corinthians 13:11 God is called "the God of love and peace;" Romans 15:5, "the God of patience and of comfort;" 2:15, "the God of hope." This word "comfort" (unfortunately interchanged with "consolation" in the Authorized Version) and the word "affliction" (varyingly rendered by "trouble" and "tribulation" in the Authorized Version), are the keynotes of this passage; and to some extent of the whole Epistle. St. Paul is haunted as it were and possessed by them. "Comfort," as verb or substantive, occurs ten times in vers. 3-7; and "affliction" occurs four times in succession. It is characteristic of St. Paul's style to be thus dominated, as it were, by a single word (comp. notes on 2 Corinthians 3:2, 13; 4:2; see note on 2 Corinthians 10:8). The needless variations of the Authorized Version were well intentioned, but arose from a false notion of style, a deficient sense of the precision of special words, and an inadequate conception of the duties of faithful translation, which requires that we should as exactly as possible reflect the peculiarities of the original, and not attempt to improve upon them.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) Blessed be God . . . the Father of mercies.--The opening words are spoken out of the fulness of the Apostle's heart. He has had a comfort which he recognises as having come from God. The nature of that comfort, as of the previous sorrow, is hardly stated definitely till we come to 2Corinthians 2:13; 2Corinthians 7:6-7. At present the memory of it leads him to something like a doxology, as being the utterance of a more exulting joy than a simple thanksgiving, such as we find in 1Corinthians 1:4; Philippians 1:3; Colossians 1:3. The same formula meets us in Ephesians 1:3, where also it expresses a jubilant adoration. Two special names of God are added under the influence of the same feeling. He is "the Father of mercies," the genitive being possibly a Hebraism, used in place of the cognate adjective; in which case it is identical with "God, the merciful Father," in Jewish prayers, or with the ever-recurring formula of the Koran, "Allah, the compassionate, the merciful." It seems better, however, to take the words more literally, as stating that God is the originator of all mercies, the source from which they flow. So we have the "Father of lights" in James 1:17. The precise phrase does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament; but we have the same noun in "the mercies of God" in Romans 12:1. . . .