Philemon 1:15
For perhaps he therefore departed for a season from thee, that thou mightest receive him again for ever:
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Forsitan enim ideo discessit ad horam a te, ut æternum illum reciperes :
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- τάχα γὰρ διὰ τοῦτο ἐχωρίσθη πρὸς ὥραν ἵνα αἰώνιον αὐτὸν ἀπέχῃς,
Haydock's commentary
On verses 12 to 15
Do thou receive him as my own bowels. That is, as myself. Perhaps by the permission of God's providence (who never permits evil, but for some greater good) he departed from thee for a little while,6 that thou mightest receive him for ever, being now after his conversion in a way of being made partaker with thee of the same eternal happiness. (Witham)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom An Exhortation to Theodore After His Fall, Letter I
18. Moreover also the blessed Paul not only welcomes Onesimus the unprofitable runaway thief, because he was converted, but also asks his master to treat him who had repented, on equal terms of honour with his teacher, thus saying: “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds, who was aforetime unprofitable to thee, but now is profitable to thee and to me, whom I have sent back to thee; thou therefore receive him, that is my very heart, whom I would fain have kept with me, that in thy behalf he might minister unto me in the bonds of the Gospel; but without thy mind I would do nothing that thy goodness should not be as of necessity, but of free will. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Philemon 1:4-6
Ver. 15, 16 . “For perhaps he was therefore parted from thee for a season that thou shouldest have him for ever; no longer as a bond-servant.”