The life and work of St. Paul

710 APPXHDIZ.
"
For the true reading of that verse seems to be, "for Sinai i> a mountain in Arabia ;
and, as Dr. Lightfoot has shown, there is no adequate authority for the assertion perhaps
originally a mistake of St. Chrysostom that Mount Sinai was ever called Hagar. Moreover,
it is doubtful whether, even by way of allegoric paronomasia, St. Paul would have
identified Hagwr, " a wanderer," with
" "
chadjar, a stone ; especially since Philo, who
also has an allegory about Hagar and Sarah, had already extracted a moral meaning
from the correct derivation. But setting this ancient argument aside, nothing can seem
more natural than that St. Paul, possibly already something of a fugitive, almost certainly
a sufferer in health and mind, driven by an imperious instinct to seek for solitude, should
have turned his lonely steps to a region where he would at once be safe, and unburdened,
and alone with God.
EXCURSUS X. (p. 126).
ST. PAUL'S " STAKB TS TEX FLESH."
THERE are two main passages on which our inferences about the "stake in the flesh"
must be founded, and the impression which they leave is only strengthened by more
isolated allusions. These two passages, to give them in their chronological order, are :
2 Cor. xii. 1 10 J and Gal. iv. ; 2 and I translate them in all their ruggedness, and the
interchanges of thought which render it almost impossible to explain the rapid transition
of their causal connexions.
i. The first of them runs as follows : After showing that, however weak and
unworthy he may be, he has yet laboured and suffered more than "the super-pre-eminent
Apostles, "
a boastfulness the very semblance of which he loathes, but which, again and
again, he says has been forced upon him by the intrigues and slanders of interested
opponents he mentions his perilous escape from Damascus, which had made a deep
impression on his memory, and then
"
continues : Boasting, evidently, is not expedient
for me ; for I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. 3 I know a man in Christ
fourteen years ago (whether in the body I know not, or whether out of the body I know
not : God knoweth) caught up, such a one as far as the third heaven. And I know
guch a man (whether in the body, or apart 4 from the body, I know not : God knoweth)
that he was caught up into Paradise and heard unutterable things which it is not
lawful for man to speak. About such a one I will boast ; but about myself I will not
boast except in mine infirmities. For if I should wish to boast, I shall not be a fool, for
I shall speak the truth ; but I forbear, that no one may reckon about me more than what
he seeth me or heareth anything from me. And, that I may not be puffed up by this
abundance of revelations, there was given me a stake in the flesh an angel of Satan 5 that
it may buffet me that I may not be puffed up. For this, thrice did I entreat the Lord
that it might depart from me. And He hath said to me : My grace sufficeth for thee ;
for power is being perfected in weakness. 6 Most gladly, then, rather will I boast in my
infirmities, that the power of Christ may spread its tent over me. Therefore, I am
content in infirmities, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's
sake, for when I am weak then I am powerful."?
ii. The other passage is Gal. iv. 12 16. St. Paul has been vehemently urging the
Galatians not to sink to the low level of their previous bondage from the freedom of the
Gospel, and in the midst of his reasonings and exhortations he inserts this tendei
appeal :
1 Written not earlier than the autumn of A.D. 57.
* Written perhaps in the spring of A.D. 68.
The reading of this verse is extremely doubtful ; v. supra, ad TJoo.
.
Of. 1 Oor. r. *. Omit * pov fa, A, B, D, F. O).
Cor. xiL 119