Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 13:1

"This is the third time I am coming to you. At the mouth of two witnesses or three shall every word established." — 2 Corinthians 13:1 (ASV)

This is the third time I am coming to you (2 Corinthians 13:1). These words may point to one of two possibilities. The first is that Paul refers to three actual visits:

1. The visit recorded in Acts 18:1.
2. An unrecorded visit (of which, however, there is no trace) during Paul’s stay at Ephesus.
3. The visit now being planned.

The second possibility is that he refers to a sequence involving:

1. One actual visit, as before.
2. The intended visit that had been abandoned (see Notes on 2 Corinthians 1:16).
3. The visit he now has in view.

The latter interpretation aligns best with the known facts of the case and is in complete accordance both with his language in 2 Corinthians 12:14 and with his way of expressing his intentions, as in 1 Corinthians 16:5.

In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established (Deuteronomy 19:15). There seems no adequate reason not to take these words in their simple and natural meaning. The rule, quoted from Numbers 35:30, Deuteronomy 17:6, and Deuteronomy 19:15, was like an axiom of Jewish law and, one might almost say, of natural law.

And it had received fresh prominence from our Lord’s reproduction of it when giving directions for the discipline of the society He came to found (see Note on Matthew 18:16). What could be more natural than for Paul to say, “When I come, there will be no more surmises and vague suspicions, but every offense will be dealt with in a vigorous and full inquiry”? There seems something strained, almost fantastic, in the interpretation that, seizing on the accidental juxtaposition of “the third time” and the “three witnesses,” assumes that the Apostle personifies his actual or intended visits and treats them as the witnesses whose testimony was to be decisive. It is a fatal objection to this view that it turns the judge into a prosecutor and makes him appeal to his own reiteration of his charges as evidence of their truth.