1 Corinthians 4:13

Being defamed, we entreat. When we are reviled, called evil dealers in evil arts, and railed at. The word "blaspheme" has this meaning also in Titus 3:2. When thus treated we speak the meekness after the manner of suppliants, as the Greek Fathers take it, or else we entreat God for them. But the first is nearer the Greek. S. Basil (Reg. 226, quoted above) renders it "comfort," in the sense of filling their minds with a perception of the truth. Comfort is used in this sense in Romans 1:12.

We are made as the filth of the world. We are made, as Theophylact and Theodoret say, as it were the excrement of the world not once, but always, down to this present hour. We are made like filth that has been collected from all sides, is the literal force of the Greek. We are reckoned as most contemptible, as wretches unworthy of man's society, fit only to be driven away and destroyed.

S. Paul is here alluding to Lamentations 3:45 : "Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people." For Jeremiah was imprisoned by the Jews, cast off, and rejected, and so was a type of Paul and the Apostles, imprisoned, rejected, and at length slain by the Jews and Gentiles.

But Gagneius and others translate this word "expiatory victims." Hence S. Ambrose, too, commenting on Psalms 119:8, reads it, "We are made for the world's purging." We should notice that the Greek word here used was applied to the wicked men and others doomed to sacrifice by the Gentiles, in order to get rid of famine or tempests of any other public calamity. So, for instance, did the Decii devote themselves for their country, and Curtius, who, to banish a common plague and appease the Deity, leaped in full armour into a gulf in Rome. So, to, Servius, on the line of the Æneid, "O accursed thirst for gold, to what villainy do you not impel the hearts of men?" notes that famine is called accursed or sacred after the manner of the Gauls. For when the citizens of Marseilles were suffering from pestilence, a certain poor man offered himself to the state to be fed for a full year on the best food at the public expense, and then to be led through the city with execration, clothed with evergreens and sacred garments, that on his head might fall all the evils of the state; and then he was either sacrificed or drowned. Hence Budæus, following Suidas and others, says that καθαρμάτα were men dedicated to death, and thrown into the sea, bearing the burden of all the wickedness of the state, and so sacrificed to Neptune, with the words added: "Be thou our expiatory victim." Such a victim was the goat sent into the wilderness by the Hebrews (Lev 16:21). But the Greek and Latin versions support the first meaning in preference, and that gives the more literal and simple sense. For S. Paul is here treating of the contempt meted put to him and his companions, whereby they were spurned by tongue and foot as the vilest wretches living.

And are the offscouring of all things unto this day. Offscouring is the translation of a word which denoted such things as scabs, nail-pairings, and such worthless things as are cast aside and trodden under foot by all. So Chrysostom, Theophylact, Anselm. Œcumenius understands it to mean a little rag or cloth by which sweat is wiped off the face; others follow Budæus, and take it to mean "expiatory victim," as I have said. This is supported, too, by the Syriac Version. Vers. 14, 15. I write not these things... for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel. And therefore I alone am your spiritual father. Other teachers are but schoolmasters who educate the child sent them by the father. Paul hints that the Corinthians should be ashamed of themselves for passing by the Apostles, who had converted them to Christ, and who were suffering so much for their sake, and for following after vain-glorious teachers, and for wishing to be called their disciples.