I speak not this to condemn you: for I have said before, that you are in our hearts to die and live with you.
All Commentaries on 2 Corinthians 7:3 Go To 2 Corinthians 7
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
I speak not this to condemn you. I do not mean to accuse you of suspecting me of such things.
Ye are in our hearts to die and live with you. So great is my love for you that with you and for you I am ready both to die and to live. How this harmonises with the preceding will be seen in ver4. S. Paul alludes to lovers, whose love is commonly so ardent as to make them of one life, to hold all things in common, and to involve one in the death of the other. Cf. Nilus and Euryalus in Virgil, n. ix427-445; the Soldurii, mentioned by Caesar in lib. iii. de Bello Gallico, and the sacred cohort of the Thebans, described by Plutarch. Erasmus and others add that the Apostle is referring to that ancient kind of friendship in which on the death of one friend the other also killed himself, as Caesar records that the Soldurii were in the habit of doing. Such was the friendship Horace says that he had with Mcenas. In Peru and Mexico wives and the better-loved servants, when the husband or master dies, throw themselves upon the funeral pyre, or are buried alive with the dead body. In Japan, too, when noblemen are condemned to death, they in company with their nearest friends inflict death on themselves by ripping themselves up. Such suicide the Apostle condemns, but praises and embraces the friendship. He seems to say: "As they love each other even to death, so do I, 0 Corinthians, love you, and long to live with you and die with you; but I do not, as they, long to inflict on myself death." But there is no need to suppose that the Apostle finds a model for his love in illicit and parricidal friendships. They chiefly manifested themselves in simultaneous death and self-murder, and were, therefore, wickednesses, and deserving blame rather than praise
