Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren, that they would go before unto you, and make up beforehand your gift, of which you had notice before, that the same might be ready, as a matter of gift, and not as an extortion.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul was not asking Titus and his colleagues to go to Corinth as if they were not willing to do so, but in order to prove his love for them. Titus and his friends wanted to go, and Paul is urging them to do so without delay. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
As a matter of bounty. As a blessing (Latin version). That your beneficence may seem spontaneous and generous, not extorted from greedy persons (Anselm, Theophylact, Chrysostom). Why bounty is called a blessing is explained in the note to ver6. The Greek, ευ̉λογία denotes both blessing and a good and fruitful contribution or almsgiving (Erasmus). In 1 Corinthians 16:1, the Apostle called these contributions or collections ευ̉λογίαι. Both meanings have place here. S. Paul is urging the Corinthians to spontaneous and cheerful (denoted by blessing), as well as to fruitful and liberal, contribution. He is engaged in describing the spirit that should animate the giver, viz, one ready and cheerful, unforced, unconstrained, unstained by covetousness or meanness.
Again, he resumed the subject in a different manner: and that he may not seem to be saying these things without object, he asserts that the sole reason for this journey was, that they might not be put to shame. Do you see how his words, It is superfluous for me to write, were the beginning of advising? You see, at least, how many things he discourses concerning this ministering. And along with this, one may further remark that, (lest he should seem to contradict himself as having said, It is superfluous, yet discoursing at length about it,) he passed on unto discourse of quickness and largeness and forwardness [in contributing,] by this means securing that point also. For these three things he requires. And indeed he moved these three main points even at the first, for when he says, In much proof of affliction the abundance of their joy, and their deep poverty, abounded unto the riches of their liberality, he says nothing else than that they contributed both much and gladly and quickly...
