What Does 2 Corinthians 1:9 Mean?

(9) **We had the sentence of death in ourselves.**—The word translated “sentence” (*apokrima*) does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament, nor indeed in the LXX. Literally, it means *answer,* and was probably a half-technical term, used in medical practice, which St. Paul may have adopted from St. Luke, expressing the “opinion” which a physician formed on his diagnosis of a case submitted to him. The Apostle had found himself in a state in which, so far as he could judge for himself, that opinion would have been against the prospect of recovery. He ceased to trust in himself, *i.e.,* in any remedial measures that he could take for himself. He could only fold his hands and trust in God. Recovery in such a case was a veritable resurrection. It may be noted, however, that a cognate word (*apokrisis*) is frequently used by Hippocrates in the sense of a morbid or virulent secretion, and possibly the word here used may also have had that meaning. In this case, what he says would be equivalent to “We had the symptoms of a fatal disease in us.”