1 Corinthians 3:2

The figures used by the apostle relate to the term babes. Milk, according to 1 Corinthians 2:2, denotes the preaching of Jesus crucified, with its simplest contents and its most immediate consequences, expiation, justification by faith, the sanctification of the justified believer by the Holy Spirit, what saves by converting and regenerating. Meat represents what Paul has just called wisdom, the contemplation of the Divine plan in its entirety from its eternal predestination to its final consummation. The same figure occurs Hebrews 5:12; Hebrews 6:2, but with this difference, that there the persons in question are former Hebrews, and that the rudiments of religious knowledge (milk) are not exactly the same for those who were formerly Jews as for those who were formerly heathen.

The apostle says (literally), I have given you to drink, and that in relation to the two substantives, though the figure only corresponds to the first. It is a usual inaccuracy; comp. Luke 1:64. The words, Ye could not yet, naturally refer to the time of Paul's first stay. Meyer, Edwards think that it is unnecessary to understand an infinitive (to bear meat); perhaps they are right; it is in this sense that I have translated, “Ye were not strong enough.” Paul adds (what is still more humiliating) that this weakness characterizes even their present condition. The οὐδέ, and no more or not even, which is the reading of almost all the Mjj., is harder than the οὔτε, neither, of the T. R. This second reading is more delicate. I should not be surprised if the οὐδέ had been substituted for the οὔτε, because the τε wanted its correlative particle.

Billroth was the first to ask how this saying agrees with chap. 15 of our Epistle, where the apostle enters into such profound details respecting Christian eschatology. I think that the Ye are not able did not exclude an excursion into the domain of wisdom, when positive negations demanded it. And perhaps, as Rückert supposes, the apostle thought good to seize this opportunity to show his detractors how far he could rise when it pleased him to spread his wings.