them sorry with a letter" (II Cor. 7: 2-8) yet, as he afterward explained, his object in

thus writing, was "not for his cause that had done the wrong, nor for his cause that

suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear unto you"

(II Cor. 7: 12).

So the Galatians were to remember that Paul did not allow personal grievances to

interpose between himself and his duty. He still loved these erring Galatians; loved them

so much that he uses the strange figure of going through the pains of child-birth on their

account the second time.

"Ye have not injured me at all" but, he says, you know, on the contrary, how you

received me when I first preached the gospel to you. What does he mean by "through

infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you"?

Dia "through" followed by the accusative, as it is here, usually denotes "the ground or

motive of an action". It is possible that the rarer meaning "throughout a period of

infirmity" may be intended, and it is difficult for anyone at the present time to decide,

simply because facts known to the Galatians are unknown to ourselves.  The

straightforward translation of the passage yields the idea that at the time Paul was

suffering some physical infirmity. He had, in such unprepossessing conditions, not only

preached the gospel acceptably, but in spite of the trial such a condition imposed upon

them and himself, instead of "despising" and "rejecting" him as they might have done,

they had on the contrary received him as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.

The word translated "reject" is ekptuo, literally "to spit out", suggesting that the

sickness which had fallen on Paul, rendered him somewhat loathsome or objectionable.

He speaks of this infirmity as "my temptation", which is altered in the R.V. and reads

"and that which was a temptation to you". The word "temptation" means a "trial", and

while this bodily infirmity of Paul would have been a great trial to himself, it was in fact

a greater means of "trial" to the Galatians, and they had been proved worthy by it, for

they had not only received the Apostle "as an angel", weak and despicable as he then

was, but had manifested such love and esteem for him that had it been possible, they

would have plucked out their own eyes and have given them to him.

There are those who point to various proverbs which speak of "giving the very heart

out of one" for another, but there are one or two reasons for believing that Paul refers to a

definite affliction of his own eyes, rather than to making a proverbial reference here. In

the first case, if this be a proverb, it is rather an extravagant one, and not in line with the

usual practice of the Apostle, and secondly, it is not reasonable to use an extravagant

proverb, and yet to limit its application by the matter of "possibility"--yet to limit its

application by the matter of "possibility"--yet he says "if it had been possible". Then,

had this utterance been a proverb it would probably have read "You would have been

ready to have given your eyes to serve me", but here, Paul uses the word "to root out"

and "give unto me".  There can be little doubt but that he suffered some form of

ophthalmia, a disease very prevalent in the East in his day, and induced in him by the

vision he had received on the road to Damascus. With such a disease, he would be