II Corinthians 11:5

For--My claim is superior to that of the false teachers, "For," &c. I suppose--I reckon [ALFORD]. I was not--Greek, "That I have not been, and am not." the very chiefest apostles--James, Peter, and John, the witnesses of Christ's transfiguration and agony in Gethsemane. Rather, "those overmuch apostles," those surpassers of the apostles in their own esteem. This sense is proved by the fact that the context contains no comparison between him and the apostles, but only between him and the false teachers; Co2 11:6 also alludes to these, and not to the apostles; compare also the parallel phrase, "false apostles" (see on Co2 11:13 and Co2 12:11) [ALFORD].

After the foregoing preface to what he was about to say, the apostle in these verses mentions, I. His equality with the other apostles - that he was not a whit behind the very chief of the apostles, Co2 11:5. This he expresses very modestly: I suppose so. He might have spoken very positively. The apostleship, as an office, was equal in all the apostles; but the apostles, like other Christians, differed one from another. These stars differed one from another in glory, and Paul was indeed of the first magnitude; yet he speaks modestly of himself, and humbly owns his personal infirmity, that he was rude in speech, had not such a graceful delivery as some others might have. Some think that he was a man of very low stature, and that his voice was proportionably small; others think that he may have had some impediment in his speech, perhaps a stammering tongue. However, he was not rude in knowledge; he was not unacquainted with the best rules of oratory and the art of persuasion, much less was he ignorant of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, as had been thoroughly manifested among them. II. His equality with the false apostles in this particular - the preaching of the gospel unto them freely, without wages. This the apostle largely insists on, and shows that, as they could not but own him to be a minister of Christ, so they ought to acknowledge he had been a good friend to them. For, 1. He had preached the gospel to them freely, Co2 11:7-10. He had proved at large, in his former epistle to them, the lawfulness of ministers' receiving maintenance from the people, and the duty of the people to give them an honourable maintenance; and here he says he himself had taken wages of other churches (Co2 11:8), so that he had a right to have asked and received from them: yet he wa…

11:5-6 These false teachers claimed authority as “super apostles,” and they despised Paul’s lack of sophisticated eloquence (10:10).