Outwitting Wormwood

Phil: Paragraph 9- Study

Posted on 15. Jun, 2009 by Jeremy in Study

Verse 22 says, “Indeed, I am torn between two desires.” The verb synechomai, “I am torn,” serves to highlight the magnitude of Paul’s dilemma. It is a powerful word that can describe a person who is hemmed in on both sides so that he has no room to move (Luke 8:45) or a city encircled by enemies who are closing in on it from every side (Luke 19:43). It can describe those who are attacked or tormented by pain, grief, or terror (cf. Job 3:24 lxx; Luke 8:37). It can also describe those who are totally controlled or dominated by some external power. Paul uses synechei in this last sense in 2 Cor 5:14, the only other time he uses it, where he speaks of being completely “controlled” by the love of God. Hence, upon seeing this word one can easily picture the stress Paul felt with two desires like two equally strong external forces pressing in on him viselike from both sides (“between two”).

So Paul concludes in verse 24, “but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”  It does not appear, therefore, that “the desire weakens before the necessity” or that Paul’s “personal desire ‘to be with Christ’ in glory must be subordinated to his pastoral responsibility to the Philippians”, as though Paul himself decided through some sort of “pastoral altruism” to say no to himself and yes to “the down-to-earth needs of his fellow-believers”. Paul has already made clear that both these desires are equal in intensity, so much so that he himself was incapable of making a choice:“I cannot tell what I would choose!” (v 22). Hence, it is not Paul who, martyrlike, sacrifices his personal desire on the altar of service to others and decides to keep on living, but God who chooses for him.

[This is from the Word Biblical Commentary]