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2 Corinthians
📖 2 Corinthians
Πρὸς Κορινθίους Β (Pros Korinthious B) — 'To the Corinthians, 2.' Like the '1', the number is a filing convenience that hides how tangled the real correspondence was: this is at least the fourth letter Paul wrote to Corinth (1 Corinthians mentions a lost earlier one, and 2 Corinthians itself refers to a 'letter of tears' distinct from either), and it may itself be two or more letters joined.
The most personal, least orderly, most emotionally naked thing Paul wrote — a defense of his own ministry against rivals who had stolen the Corinthians' affection, swinging from despair to triumph inside a paragraph, and containing his deepest sentence about strength: 'my power is made perfect in weakness.'
Chapters
1 of 13 chapters translated · 7.7%
Gold chapters are published — click one to read it. The rest are still ahead.
Chapter by chapter
2 Corinthians 1The most personal letter Paul wrote opens like a man exhaling. A year after the argumentative First Corinthians, the relationship had nearly broken — a visit that went badly, rival missionaries who had turned the congregation against him, a severe “letter of tears” — and then, at the last moment, reconciliation. So he does not begin with the usual “I thank my God” but with a Jewish blessing: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassions and God of all comfort.” The word COMFORT then tolls ten times in five verses, an untranslatable drum-beat, because that is the argument: the God who comforts us in affliction does it so that we can comfort others with the comfort we received. He nearly died “in Asia” — an ordeal he pointedly refuses to describe — and it taught him to trust “God, who raises the dead.” Then the wound the whole warm opening was circling: his enemies had used a changed travel plan to call him a double-talker whose “yes” means nothing, and Paul turns even that into one of his great sentences — every promise of God is “Yes” in Christ, and the church’s “Amen” is the echo of it. ⚠ The Spirit is a “down payment” (arrabōn — the same word, still, as a modern Greek engagement ring), and the chapter ends with the apostle defending his authority and then disclaiming it in the same breath: “not that we lord it over your faith, but we are fellow workers for your joy.”
About the book
Where it sits
The EIGHTH book of the New Testament, and the fourth of Paul's letters by length. It is quarried less for doctrine than 1 Corinthians and more for the man: it preserves the 'thorn in the flesh' and the 'third heaven', the collection for Jerusalem (chapters 8-9, the New Testament's fullest teaching on giving), and the 'letter, not of ink but of the Spirit, written on tablets of the heart'.
Genre
A LETTER, and the most autobiographical in the New Testament — closer to a cornered man talking than to an argument. It is full of the vocabulary of feeling (affliction, comfort, tears, anguish, boasting, folly), and its famous chapters 10-13 turn so abruptly from the warmth of 1-9 that many scholars think a separate, angrier letter was later stitched on. Whether one letter or several, it is Paul with the guard down.
Author
PAUL, uncontested, with TIMOTHY named as co-sender — a pointed choice, since Timothy was the envoy Paul had earlier sent to Corinth (1 Corinthians 4:17) and whom the Corinthians appear to have mishandled.
Date written
c. AD 55–56, roughly a year after 1 Corinthians. It is written from MACEDONIA (2:13; 7:5), not Ephesus: after the crisis he will not name, Paul had left Asia, crossed to Macedonia, and there met Titus with the news that the breach with Corinth was healed — the relief that produced the letter.
Place
MACEDONIA — probably Philippi or Thessalonica.
Audience
The Corinthian congregation Paul founded, plus 'all the holy ones in the whole of Achaia' (1:1). Since 1 Corinthians the situation had turned: a 'painful visit' had gone wrong, an individual had insulted Paul to his face, a severe 'letter of tears' had been sent and had worked, and meanwhile rival missionaries — Paul calls them, with heavy sarcasm, 'super-apostles' — had arrived boasting of credentials, eloquence and visions, and had turned the congregation's loyalty. Most of the letter is Paul reclaiming it.
How it's laid out
1:1–2:13The reconciliation — the God of all comfort, the affliction in Asia, why Paul changed his travel plans, and the call to forgive the offender.
2:14–7:4The nature of the ministry — the new covenant 'of the Spirit', treasure in clay jars, 'we walk by faith not by sight', the ministry of reconciliation, 'now is the day of salvation'.
7:5–16The meeting with Titus, and the joy that the severe letter produced godly grief and repentance.
8:1–9:15The collection for the poor of Jerusalem — the Macedonians' example, 'God loves a cheerful giver', and the theology of generosity.
10:1–13:10The 'fool's speech' — Paul, disgusted, out-boasting the super-apostles in the only currency he owns: beatings, shipwrecks, the thorn in the flesh, and 'my power is made perfect in weakness'.
13:11–14Farewell, and the fullest trinitarian blessing in the New Testament.
What it's about
- COMFORT and AFFLICTION — thlipsis and paraklēsis, the paired words that open the letter and run through it; consolation that is passed on, not banked.
- STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS — the letter's spine, from the 'sentence of death' in chapter 1 to 'my power is made perfect in weakness' in chapter 12; power carried, deliberately, in clay jars.
- The NEW COVENANT — 'ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life'.
- RECONCILIATION — both the personal healing with Corinth and its theological ground: 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself'.
- BOASTING, again — the disease named in 1 Corinthians, here turned inside out: Paul forced to 'boast' against the super-apostles, and choosing to boast only of his weaknesses.
- GENEROSITY — chapters 8-9, the collection, and giving as grace rather than tax.
Key words & people
Words this book turns on — each links to its dictionary entry:
People & places — each links to the encyclopedia:
The source text
Translated from the Greek of the SBL GREEK NEW TESTAMENT (SBLGNT), edited by Michael W. Holmes. The Greek text is secure, but the letter poses a famous PARTITION question: chapters 10-13 change tone so sharply from 1-9 that many take them to be the 'letter of tears' (or a still-later one) joined on by an early editor, and 6:14-7:1 reads like a fragment dropped into the wrong place. These are questions of composition, not of the wording, which is well attested (P46, c. AD 200). Chapter 1 itself is textually calm apart from verse 12, where the manuscripts split by a single letter between hagiotēs ('holiness') and haplotēs ('simplicity/sincerity').
Looking forward
2 Corinthians says little about Jesus' earthly life and much about what union with him means for a battered apostle. Chapter 1 sets the key: the 'sufferings of Christ overflow into us', and every promise of God is 'Yes' in him — so that the congregation's 'Amen' is the human echo of the divine Yes. The letter goes on to 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses' (5:19), to the astonishing 'he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us' (5:21), and to the poverty-for-riches exchange of 8:9 — 'though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor'. The crucified-and-risen Christ of 1 Corinthians is here the pattern of a life: dying and living carried in one body.
Where the debates are
How many letters the canonical '2 Corinthians' contains, and whether chapters 10-13 are the 'letter of tears'. Whether 6:14-7:1 is a Pauline digression or a non-Pauline fragment. The identity of the 'super-apostles' (10-13) and the 'offender' (2:5-11; 7:12). What the 'thorn in the flesh' (12:7) was — an illness, an opponent, a temptation — on which the guesses are endless and none secure. And what the near-fatal 'affliction in Asia' (1:8) actually was. The library reports the positions; it does not vote.