2 Corinthians 12:3,4

2 Corinthians 12:3-4. And I know such a man (whether in the body or out of the body, [1] I know not; God knoweth), how that he was caught up into Paradise. Are we to take this as expressive of a further transition, raising him to a still loftier region than “the third heaven” called “Paradise”? So thought several of the fathers, and so some of the best modern critics. But besides that this is not what we think would naturally be gathered from the words, the fatal objection to it is that in this case the apostle tells us only what passed in the higher sphere of “Paradise,” and nothing at all of what he experienced in the “third heaven.” Is this conceivable? Was anything in the mere translation to make the mention of it worth while? Why should he not have passed at once to the “Paradise” scene? To us (and we are far from being alone) it appears pretty clear that the rapture of the first statement is merely a preface to what is to be afterwards stated about it, and that what follows merely takes up again what was said before, with a slight diversity in the name of the region into which he was “caught up;” in other words, that “Paradise” and “the third heaven” are but two names for the same thing. The word Paradise is an oriental word signifying a garden or open park, and as such it is employed by the Septuagint in Genesis 2:8 to express the garden of Eden. It is here used in the same sense in which our Lord used it to the penitent malefactor (Luke 23:43), “Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Into this blessed dwelling-place of “the Lord” was the apostle “caught up” how he knows not, and so we need not. In its final condition it is held forth in promise “to him that overcometh” as “Paradise restored” (Revelation 2:7),

[1] The Revised Version, following another reading; says here “apart from the body,” but the authority for it is not so decisive as to require a change.

and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter paradoxical language, ‘speakings which may not be spoken.' Things not in themselves unutterable (for how then, as Bengel says, could the apostle have heard them?), but so sublime and heavenly as to be unsuitable to this earthly state, and therefore not proper to be reported to Christians here. What, then, was the object of them? No doubt, first of all, to cheer himself under the bitter disappointment in his first experience as a convert at Jerusalem so contrary to all his expectations as it doubtless was; and next, to brace him up for the whole heroic career of unparalleled self-sacrifice and unequalled success which lay before him as a missionary of the cross.