Whom I have sent again: you therefore receive him, that is, my own heart:
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George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Do thou receive him as my own bowels. That is, as myself. Perhaps by the permission of God's providence (who never permits evil, but for some greater good) he departed from thee for a little while, that thou mightest receive him for ever, being now after his conversion in a way of being made partaker with thee of the same eternal happiness. (Witham)
Whom I have sent again to you.
By this also he has quenched his anger, by delivering him up. For masters are then most enraged, when they are entreated for the absent, so that by this very act he mollified him the more.
Thou therefore receive him, that is my own bowels.
And again he has not given the bare name, but uses with it a word that might move him, which is more affectionate than son. He has said, son, he has said, I have begotten him, so that it was probable he would love him much, because he begot him in his trials. For it is manifest that we are most inflamed with affection for those children, who have been born to us in dangers which we have escaped, as when the Scripture says, Woe, Barochabel! and again when Rachel names Benjamin, the son of my sorrow. Genesis 35:18
Thou therefore, he says, receive him, that is my own bowels. He shows the greatness of his affection. He has not said, Take him back, he has not said, Be not angry, but receive him; that is, he is worthy...
Then when he says, I am sending him back to you, he makes his request. First, he makes it, then he answers a question: I had wanted to keep him here. And so he says, and do you welcome him as though he were my very heart. And this because I have seen him changed, the sign of which is, I send him back to you. On the contrary, Deuteronomy 23.15: ‘Thou shalt not deliver to his master the servant that is fled to you.’ I reply that is true when the master seeks him in order to put him to death. Therefore, he says, I did not want to do anything...’ Philippians 1-7: ‘I have the right to feel so about you, because I have you in my heart, all of you, alike in my chains.’
