Charles Ellicott Commentary Philippians 4:12

"I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want." — Philippians 4:12 (ASV)

Everywhere and in all things.—The original has no such distinction of the two words. It is, in all and everything; in life as a whole, and in all its separate incidents.

I am instructed.—The word again is a peculiar and almost technical word. It is, I have been instructed; I have learned the secret—a phrase properly applied to those admitted into mysteries such as the Eleusinian, which enshrined a secret unknown except to the initiated. Secondarily, as the context would seem to suggest, it also applied to those who entered the inner circle of an exclusive philosophy, learning there what the common herd could neither understand nor care for.

A Stoic might well have used these words. There is even a touch of the Stoical contempt in the word “to be full,” which properly applies to cattle, though frequently used of people in the New Testament. Perhaps, like all ascetics, they mostly knew how “to suffer need,” better than how “to abound.” But a Marcus Aurelius might have boldly claimed the knowledge of both.