1 Corinthians 15:32

1 Corinthians 15:32. If after the manner of men (if speaking humanly) I fought with beasts at Ephesus. To take this literally is most unnatural. For, besides that as a Roman citizen the apostle would be exempt from such a thing, we can hardly suppose that such an occurrence, if it did take place, would never have been mentioned in the Acts, nor included in the minute detail of his perils, which he gives in 2 Corinthians 11:23-29. Clearly, the statement is to be understood in a figurative sense, thus: ‘If after encountering, as I did at Ephesus, such a furious opposition as was more like a rush of wild beasts than the hostility of reasonable men.'

Compare chap. 1 Corinthians 4:9; 2 Timothy 4:17 what doth it profit me, if the dead are not raised? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. [1] This maxim, though found in a fragment of the Greek poet Menander (about B.C. 280), was not likely taken directly from him by our apostle; for it is just such a proverbial saying as, when once penned, would be sure to be caught up and repeated from mouth to mouth.

[1] A different punctuation of this verse is adopted by many of the best interpreters, thus: “what doth it profit me! If the dead are not raised, let us eat,” etc. So Chrysostom of the Cithers, and of the moderns Beza, Bengel, De Wette, Meyer, Stanley, and Alford, supported by the punctuation of the Vulgate, which is adopted by Griesbach, Lachmann, Tregelles, and Teschendorf. But the sense given by the punctuation of the received text adopted by Erasmus and our Authorised Version seems to us more natural.