1 Corinthians 9:12

“If others be partakers of this right over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this right; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ.”

As to this right of support the Corinthians granted it to others, after Paul left them; how would they deny it to him and to those (us) who were the first to bring them salvation?

The apostle alludes to workers who came afterwards, and when the Church was already founded. They were either Corinthian teachers or Judaizing intruders. The passage 2 Corinthians 11:20 leaves no doubt as to the manner in which the latter turned their ministry in the Church to advantage: “If any man bring you into bondage, if he devour you, if he take of you,...ye bear it.” These strangers, then, fleeced the Corinthians at will, and Paul and his companions did not possess the right which they declined to exercise! Hofmann thus establishes the contrast, rather, it is true, according to the apostle's thought than his words: “We have the right, and we do not use it; they have not the right, and they use it.”

The expression τῆς ἐξουσίας ὑμῶν has been variously understood. Some have given the word the meaning of οὐσία, possessions, goods: “If others share your possessions. ” But the term has never this meaning in the New Testament, and it has a wholly different one in the second part of this same verse. Ewald and Holsten reach the same meaning, but by another way: they understand by ἐξουσία ὑμῶν the full liberty which the Corinthians have to dispose of their earthly goods. This meaning is equally inapplicable in the second part of the verse. We must simply, with de Wette and Meyer, make ὑμῶν the genitive of the object (as in Matthew 10:1): “the right or power over you; ” that is to say, the right of having ourselves supported by you. Olearius had conjectured the reading ἡμῶν : “ our right over you.” Rückert was disposed to accept this correction. But it is not necessary, and 1 Corinthians 11:10 shows with what liberty Paul uses this term ἐξουσία.

The second part of the verse is strictly speaking an anticipation; for Paul has not yet closed his exposition of the reasons on which his apostolic right rests (see 1 Corinthians 9:13-14); and it is not till 1 Corinthians 9:15 that he develops the idea, enunciated here in advance, of his renunciation of his right. But the eagerness of his adversaries to secure payment of their ministry, would seem to lead him immediately to contrast with their love of comfort his own disinterestedness.

The apostle, in consequence of his renunciation of all payment, had to suffer, not only every kind of privations (nakedness, hunger, thirst), but also all kinds of labours and watchings; see the description 2 Corinthians 11:24-27, where he contrasts his kind of life with that of the Judaizing emissaries. The verb στέγω, strictly to cover, and that so as to receive the blows intended for another, consequently signifies also to bear. Holsten well: “I bear all the labours of life without having recourse to your help.” Heinrici gives to this word the meaning of self-restraining, patiently keeping silence; but this meaning seems to us less natural than the preceding.

Of the two readings ἐκκοπή (mutilation, cutting off) and ἐγκοπή (notch, hindrance), the second is preferable; the first term would be too strong. In speaking of a hindrance to be removed, Paul is thinking, no doubt, of the false judgments which might be called forth, especially in Greece, by a preaching of the gospel, which, like the teaching of itinerant philosophers and rhetoricians, should be recompensed with payment in any form whatever. He was concerned to exalt the dignity of his message by making it gratuitous. The term εὐαγγέλιον has here, as most frequently in the New Testament, the verbal sense: the act of preaching.

After this anticipation, called forth by the contrast he presented to his adversaries, he resumes the demonstration he had begun, and closes it with the two most decisive arguments.