Philemon 1:16
Not now as a servant, but instead of a servant, a most dear brother, especially to me: but how much more to thee both in the flesh and in the Lord?
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- jam non ut servum, sed pro servo carissimum fratrem, maxime mihi : quanto autem magis tibi et in carne, et in Domino ?
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- οὐκέτι ὡς δοῦλον ἀλλὰ ὑπὲρ δοῦλον, ἀδελφὸν ἀγαπητόν, μάλιστα ἐμοί, πόσῳ δὲ μᾶλλον σοὶ καὶ ἐν σαρκὶ καὶ ἐν κυρίῳ.
Haydock's commentary
Receive him not now as a servant, but also as a most dear brother, especially to me. Nay I may say, how much more dear even to thee, both in the flesh, having been a Gentile as thou thyself wast, and having been also a servant in thy family. And secondly, he ought now to be dear to thee in our Lord, he who was thy servant, being now united to thee by the same faith, and by an union of charity. See Estius. (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.”