2 Corinthians 11:32–33

2 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 11

Paul’s Boast of His Apostolic Calling. 2 Cor 11, 16–33.

A further recital of hardships arid difficulties: V.32. In Damascus, the governor under Aretas, the king, kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me; v.33. and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.

Paul now adds an account of a which befell him shortly after his conversion It was after his return from Arabia, when he was preaching so openly and fearlessly in Damascus, that the Jews took counsel to kill him, Acts 9, 23-25. Their influence in the city was so great that they induced the ethnarch of King Aretas of Arabia, the father-in-law of Herod Agrippa, to guard the city by placing a watch at all the gates, while they themselves searched the city and made every attempt to apprehend Paul.

But the Lord watched over His servant. It seems that one of the members of the Christian congregation at Damascus lived nest to the city wall, and so the disciples took him to this house. When night came, they took him either to an opening in the city wall or to a window of the house where it was flush with the wall, and let him down in a basket. Thus he escaped from the city, and the plans of his enemies were frustrated, both those of the Jews and those of the ethnareh.

Note that it is right for a Christian and also for a Christian pastor to flee for his life in times of persecution, when there is an opportunity and it may be done without a denial of the truth.