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;
All Commentaries on 2 Corinthians 11:25 Go To 2 Corinthians 11
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
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, on the open sea (Theophylact, Ambrose, S. Thomas). Haymo says that this latter explanation of S. Paul"s rescue alive from the belly of the deep, like another Jonah , is the tradition of the Fathers.
Of these scourgings and this shipwreck there is no record in the Acts of the Apostles. The shipwreck at Melita, narrated in Acts xxvii, happened long after this, when Paul was sent a prisoner to Rome. Only one scourging is mentioned, that in Acts xvi, and only one stoning, that in Acts xiv. S. Luke , it is evident, therefore, is silent on many details of S. Paul"s life.
