12—14.
which follows. It is better, however, to refer the διό to the great thought of the whole paragraph, to which the statement in ver. 12 is subordinate, viz., the dignity of the office committed to Paul and its significance forthem. Because the great trust of the Apostleship among the Gen- tiles is what he has declared it to be for himself and for them, he puts this request before them. The αἰτεῖν, which some- times expresses a demand (Luke i. 63; 1 Cor. i. 22), has the simple sense of asking here ; and in such connections as the present αἰτοῦμαι has the full sense of asking for one’s self. It is followed sometimes by the acc. and inf. (Luke xxiii, 23; Acts ΠΠ. 14), and sometimes, as here, by the simple inf. (Acts vii. 46). The idea in the verb ἐγκακεῖν is that of losing courage, becoming faint of heart. The form ἐκκακεῖν, which is given in the TR, appears in CD®FKL, etc. It is doubtful, however, whether that form occurs anywhere in ordinary Greek. It may have had a place in popular, oval use. The written form was ἐγκακεῖν, and that form appears here in most of the best MSS. (ΒΝΔΡΙ, etc.). Hence LTrRV adopt ἐγκακεῖν ; TWH, ἐνκακεῖν. But what is the con- struction here? Some supply Θεόν, and make the sense either (1) ‘‘I pray God that ye faint not,” or (2) “1 pray God that I faint not”. But if the subject of the αἰτοῦμαι had been God, the Θεόν could scarcely have been omitted, as there is nothing in the context clearly to sug- gest it. And that it is the readers, not Paul himself, whose possible faint-heart- edness is referred to appears from the force of the ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν and the ἥτις ἐστὶ δόξα ὑμῶν. Paul himself rejoiced in his tribulations (2 Cor. xii. 5, 10: Col. i. 24, etc.), and a prayer in such circumstances as the present betraying any fear about himself would be utterly unlike him. But he might have cause enough to apprehend that these converts might not all view painful things as he did. Hence ὑμᾶς is to be understood as the subject of αἰτοῦμαι (cf. 2Cor. v. 20; Heb. xiii. 19). The ἐν before θλίψεσι has the proper sense of in (not ‘‘at” as RV puts it), pointing to the circumstances, sphere, or relation in which the faint-heartedness ought not to show itself (cf. Win.-Moult., pp. 482, 483, and Ell., zm loc.). These θλίψεις were ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν (the phrase ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν going surely with the θλίψεσί μου, not with αἰτοῦμαι as Harless strangely puts it), as sufferings endured in virtue of Paul’s Apostleship among the Gentiles ; cf, Phil. i. 17. The defining article again