Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Philemon · About this commentary
No Longer a Slave
Philemon 1:15-16
15 For perhaps he was therefore separated from you for a while that you would have him forever, · WEB
What ran off as property comes back as family — the separation reread as providence, the status dissolved by kinship.
Verse 15 rereads the whole affair, and does it with a word of real modesty: perhaps. Perhaps he was separated from you for a while so that you might have him back forever. The verb is passive and the agent unnamed; Paul is suggesting the reading Joseph gave his own story — men meant evil, God meant it for good Genesis 50:20 — but where Joseph could say it outright, Paul says perhaps. Providence is claimed in hindsight and held with open hands. What is not tentative is the trade: separated for an hour, returned forever.
Verse 16 then dissolves the old relation from the inside. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave — a beloved brother, especially to Paul, how much more to Philemon, both in the flesh and in the Lord. In the flesh: the man in his house, at his table. In the Lord: the man beside him at the assembly's prayers. The one called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's freedman 1 Corinthians 7:22, and verse 16 does not lower the master an inch — it raises the slave until the chain has nothing left to hold.
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