Three times was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, three times I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul suffered the beating with rods at the hands of Gentiles. He was stoned by the Jews in a city of Lycaonia. Someone who sailed as much as he did would easily have been shipwrecked three times. He was adrift at sea on his journey to Rome, when he had appealed to Caesar. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
I have been in the deep. The Greek word for the deep may refer to a well or a prison, as well as the sea. Hence (1.) some think, says Theophylact, that that well is meant in which Paul is said to have lain concealed after escaping from the attack made on him by the people of Lystra (Acts xiv18). (2.) Baronius (Annals, A.D58), following Bede and Theodoret, thinks that the Cyzicenum, that deep and loathsome dungeon, like the Barathrum at Athens and the Tullianum at Rome, into which Paul was thrown, is here meant. (3.) It is better to understand the deep to be the sea, and to be an explanation of the hardships of his shipwreck: " A night and a day I have been in the deep." In other words, he says: I was tossed about by so violent a tempest that I seemed to be days and nights in the depths of the sea (Maldonatus Not. Manusc.). Or it may be that he means to say that after his shipwreck he spent a day and a night tossed by the waves, not in a boat or on a raft, but swimming in the deep, i.e,...
The East has grown luminous with the saints, with them the West has become brilliant, the North is raised up by them, from them the South has learned. They have ascended to the firmament and opened it, they have gone down to the sea and explored it.
Thrice I suffered shipwreck. This was before the shipwreck in his voyage to Rome, by which we make take notice, that St. Luke, in the Acts, omits a great many things relating to St. Paul; as also when he adds, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. We do not read expressed in the Greek, of the sea; but the Greek word is observed to imply the same: and so it is understood by St. Chrysostom who gives these two expositions; first, that he was truly and literally in the middle of the sea. Secondly, that he was floating or swimming in the sea after shipwreck, which seems the more common interpretation. (Witham)
St. Paul could have avoided that disgrace, as a Roman. See Acts xxiii.; but in Acts xvi. he refused to claim his privilege, that he might have an opportunity of converting the guard of the prison. (Pastorini)
And what has this to do with the Gospel? Because he went forth on long journeys; and those by sea.
A night and a day I have been in the deep. Some say this means out on the open sea, others, swimming upon it, which is also the truer interpretation. There is nothing wonderful, at least, about the former, nor would he have placed it as greater than his shipwrecks.
