2 Corinthians 1:3

2 Corinthians 1:3. Blessed be the God and Father, etc. not ‘Blessed is God' (as Alford unnaturally and inconsistently with his own rendering of the same words in Ephesians 1:3), the Father of mercies and God of all comfort Divine mercies of which, at the time referred to, the apostle had had special experience who comforteth us [1] in all our trouble, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any trouble, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. How the capacity to sympathise with the suffering is acquired by the personal experience of suffering, and deepened in proportion to the ex-tent and variety of that experience, who does not know? The perfection of it is found in One alone (Hebrews 4:14-16).

[1] Stanley notes it as a characteristic of this Epistle, that in it the apostle speaks of himself in the plural number much more frequently than elsewhere.