2 Corinthians 1:11

ye also helping together on our behalf by your supplication; that, for the gift [of special deliverance] bestowed upon us by means of many [who prayed for us], thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf. [Your prayers aided to save our life; and our life, thus saved, may save and bless many, and so cause them to glorify God. The troubles to which the apostle here refers as befalling him in Asia, were evidently those which culminated in the riot at Ephesus (Acts 19:23-41; Acts 20:1). Since Paul was accustomed to make light of ordinary physical danger, and since he did not go into the theater, and since they find nothing on the face of Luke's record which indicates that Paul suffered any anguish or any other discomfiture at that time, some commentators have sought to find some other danger or distress assailing him, and, failing to find it, they have set about inventing it. This has led to all manner of extravagant and unseemly absurdities, and to assertions that the apostle had cancer, paralysis, epileptic fits, etc. Those learned in books are very often deficient in the knowledge of human nature; but one skilled in the latter knows that no man could pass through Paul's experience at Ephesus without undergoing immense excitement, constant anxieties and most depressing nervous reaction. If Luke makes no mention of such things as part of the incidents at Ephesus, neither does he mention them elsewhere. He busied himself with the external, not with the consequent distresses of the apostle. One searches his writings in vain for most of that long list of hardships which Paul gives in chapter 11. But Paul himself tells of these anxieties and sufferings (Acts 20:19; Acts 20:27; Acts 20:31; 1 Corinthians 15:32 and note). Had it been any sickness he would likely have mentioned it, and he would hardly in that case have used the expression "so great a death" when referring to it. Death by any natural means was not sufficiently repugnant to Paul for him to use such language (2 Corinthians 5:2; Philippians 1:23). That he contents himself with describing his troubles in this general way is itself significant, for it shows that the apostle thought it would be amply sufficient for the information of the Corinthians. The gossip of merchants and travelers would have acquainted Corinth with the great hubbub which had been raised about Diana and idolatry in Ephesus, and it was prudent in Paul to speak of and commit himself as to his part in it in just such indefinite terms; for his letter would be widely circulated. Having spoken of his life as worth saving, he next takes up that thought, and tells why he dares to speak of himself in this apparently boastful or glorifying manner.]