1 Corinthians 15:8

“And lastly, after all, He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time [the untimely birth]”

By the first words the apostle seems to indicate not only that the appearance to him came after the others, but that it was the close of the appearances of the risen One in general. He is not speaking in this passage of visions, like those he himself had afterwards, or like that of the Apocalypse.

The adverb ἔσχατον, in the last place, is used before the gen. πάντων, all, as a preposition. The word all may relate to all the individuals mentioned in the foregoing enumeration, or, with Meyer, to the apostles only, because of the term τὸ ἔκτρωμα which follows; or finally, we may apply it, as Edwards does, to all Christians in general, in the sense that no one after Paul was to see, and no one really saw, the risen Christ. I doubt whether the apostle had these three shades distinctly present to his mind. He certainly thought of all the persons enumerated above, among whom the apostles ranked first, and judged that with this appearance granted to him, the list of such facts was closed.

The strange word ἔκτρωμα, abortion, untimely birth, from τιτρώσκω, pierce, tear, denotes a child born in a violent and premature way. And as such children are generally inferior in strength to those who are born in a normal way, the expression has been taken as denoting nothing more than a feeling of infirmity: “As a helpless babe scarcely deserves the name of man, I dare hardly regard myself as an apostle;” so Theodoret, Bengel, de Wette, Meyer, Edwards. But Paul himself affirms in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “that he laboured more than they all.” This is no admission of weakness. And why not abide by the explanation indicated by the etymological and uniform meaning of the word used? Why not take it to denote the violent and unnatural mode of his call to the apostleship, especially at the moment when he is recalling the appearance of the Lord on the way to Damascus? So Calvin, Grotius, Billroth, Heinrici. The other apostles were called when they were already believers; they are like ripe fruits which fell, so to speak, of themselves from the tree of Judaism, and which the Lord's hand gathered without effort, whereas he, Paul, was torn, as by a violent operation, from that Judaism to which he was yet clinging with all the fibres of his heart and will. Ambrosiaster understands the word in this sense: born out of time (too late), when Christ had already returned to heaven. But this circumstance would rather imply something honourable (Galatians 1:1).

The article the (τῷ) designates Paul as the only one so named, and probably alludes to the fact, that in a numerous family there is often a child ill-born. It is obvious that when he recalls the boundless grace which was shown him in that striking act of mercy, the apostle feels the need of casting himself in the dust.

The form ὡσπερεί occurs nowhere else in the whole New Testament except in a variant (1 Corinthians 4:13); but it is frequent in the classics, especially in Plato. The final ει is properly a conjunction belonging to a verb understood (“as if it were”).

These two sides of his ministry, the facts which humble him and the height to which grace has raised him, are developed in the following verses: