Biblion Bible Commentary
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Speaking as a Fool
2 Corinthians 11:16-21
16 I say again, let no one think me foolish. But if so, yet receive me as foolish, that I also may boast a little. · WEB
Paul labels his own argument foolish before making it, and then lists five things the congregation had put up with from men who did charge them.
I say again, let no one think me foolish. But if so, yet receive me as foolish, that I also may boast a little.
The self-labeling is deliberate and repeated. He has already announced the foolishness once 2 Corinthians 11:1, and verse 17 makes the disclaimer explicit: that which I speak, I don't speak according to the Lord, but as in foolishness.
That is a strange sentence in a letter defending apostolic standing. He is marking a stretch of his own argument as not carrying the authority the rest of it claims — because the method is borrowed from his opponents, and he will not pretend otherwise: seeing that many boast after the flesh, I will also boast.
Then verse 19, which is the most sarcastic line in the letter: for you bear with the foolish gladly, being wise.
They are wise, and they have therefore no difficulty tolerating fools. He asks to be admitted on the same terms already extended to others, and the request is an accusation.
What they have tolerated is then itemized, five things in one verse, and the sequence gets worse as it goes: you bear with a man if he brings you into bondage, if he devours you, if he takes you captive, if he exalts himself, or if he strikes you on the face.
Enslavement, being eaten up, being taken as spoil, watching a man promote himself, and finally physical assault. The list moves from the financial to the social to a blow, and the point of putting them together is that a congregation which absorbed all five had ample patience — it simply spent none of it on the man who founded it.
And verse 21 turns the knife on himself: to my shame, I speak as though we had been weak.
Measured against that list, his conduct looks like incapacity. He never enslaved them, never devoured them, never took a fee, never struck anyone. Beside men who did, restraint reads as weakness — and he says to my shame, adopting their scale for one sentence in order to show what it produces.
Then he agrees to compete: in whatever way anyone is bold (I speak in foolishness), I am bold also. The parenthesis is the third disclaimer in six verses.
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