2 Corinthians 11:25

Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep.

Beaten with rods ... In Acts is the record of Paul's being thus beaten at Philippi; but nothing is known of the other two punishments (Acts 16:22,23).

Once was I stoned ...; Acts 14:19 describes this event, in which Paul was apparently thought to be dead by his enemies. It occurred at Lystra.

Thrice I suffered shipwreck ... As this was written before the shipwreck on Malta, it has to refer to events nowhere else recorded. Paul made no less than nine voyages before these lines were written and another nine afterward.[49] Travel by ship in those times was hazardous indeed.

A night and a day ... in the deep ... "After one of the shipwrecks, Paul spent a night and a day clinging to wreckage while adrift at sea."[50] At least four times, the blessed apostle heard the dreadful cry, "Abandon ship"; and anyone who ever heard it once knows the soul-chilling terror of such an experience. Paul's sufferings are a glorious odyssey surpassing that of Homer, or any other; and, when it is remembered that this brief record is practically all that people know of it, the surpassing modesty and humility of the matchless Paul are almost unbelievable.

[49] Philip E. Hughes, op. cit., p. 411.

[50] Floyd V. Filson, op. cit., p. 401.