Verse 30
Because for the work of Christ, he came nigh unto death, hazarding his life to supply that which was lacking in your service toward me.
Hazarding his life ... The word here actually means "gambling his life" for Paul's sake. The use of the particular Greek word ([@parabolos]) has led some scholars to identify Epaphroditus' work as like that "of an association of men in Alexandria known as the Parabolani. Among the hazardous duties of this `suicide squad' was the nursing of the sick during epidemics[65]
When certain types of epidemics frightened the pagan populations, terrible things happened. Barclay tells this:
In A.D. 252 plague broke out in Carthage; the heathen threw out the bodies of their dead and fled in terror. Cyprian, the Christian bishop, gathered his congregation together and set them to burying the dead and nursing the sick.[66]
Whether anything like this was involved in the illness contracted by Epaphroditus is unknown; but we may be sure of one thing, "He was a brave man; for anyone who proposed to offer himself as an attendant of a man waiting trial on a capital charge was laying himself open to considerable risk of facing the same charge."[67]
[65] Robert H. Mounce, op. cit., p. 769.
[66] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 50.
[67] Ibid., p. 48.
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