2 Corinthians 4:17

17. For our light affliction Literally, the immediate lightness of our affliction.

Worketh The continuous present is working. This very affliction, while wasting, is, through the power of Christ, working out a divine result. The wonderful result is a weight of glory; a glory so massive, so solid, that it is a weight. The darkness of Egypt was so dense that it could be “felt.” The celestial glory is so dense that it can be weighed.

This weight of glory is not a transient radiance, but outlasts the sun; is eternal. It never grows any lighter or thinner. And as to amount, the apostle troubles the energies of the Greek language to express it. It is καθ ’ υπερβολην εις υπερβολην , if any body knows what that is. Good scholars view this as a Hebraism, according to which intensity is expressed by repetition of the same word, as if it were aboundingly abounding. So 2 Corinthians 4:16, day by day, is in St. Paul’s Hebraized Greek, day day. So Theophylact, quoted in Bloomfield’s “Recensio Synoptica,” renders it υπερβολικως υπερβολικον , surpassingly surpassing. But we cannot help suspecting, though we find no suggestion of the kind in our commentators, that the idea of progression is expressed in the preposition, upon an abounding to an abounding: taking stand upon one abounding and mounting up to another. We might then freely render it, “is working out an abounding upon abounding eternal weight of glory.” The abounding does not qualify the verb, (as Meyer and Alford,) but it qualifies eternal weight, which is a unit which, so far from diminishing, is ever more and more increasing and over-swelling. It is ever abounding and superabounding. The phrase, then, if we view it correctly, suggests the idea of eternal progression in glory.