2 Corinthians 8:20

avoiding this The word is used in Greek of furling the sails of a vessel to avoid a disaster. It occurs again in the N.T. in 2 Thessalonians 3:6. But it may perhaps be translated making this arrangement.

that no man should blame us Chrysostom and Calvin remark on the care taken by the Apostle to avoid giving the slightest cause for suspicion. He did not, says the former, send Titus alone. "He was not," says the latter, "so satisfied with himself as to think it unworthy of his dignity to avoid calumny." And he adds, "certainly nothing exposes a man to unpleasant insinuations more than the management of public money." "In this is to be observed St Paul's wisdom, not only as a man of the world, but as a man of God. He knew that he lived in a censorious age, that he was as a city set on a hill, that the world would scan his every act and his every word, and attribute all conceivable and even inconceivable evil to what he did in all honour. It was just because of St Paul's honour and innocence that he was likely to have omitted this prudence." Robertson.

abundance The Greek word occurs only here in the N.T. It comes from a root meaning firm, solid, compact, or perhaps with some lexicographers, large, and hence extensive, abundant.