But I counted it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow-worker and fellow-soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need;
For he longed after you,.... This verse and Phi 2:28 contain the reasons of the apostle's sending him; and the first is, because he had a very vehement and longing desire after all of them; to see them, as the Syriac and Ethiopic versions add, and as it is read in the Alexandrian and Claromontane copies, and in others: it was not the city of...
Verse 25. Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus is nowhere else mentioned but in this epistle. See . All that is known of him, therefore, is what is mentioned here. He was from Philippi, and was a member of the church there.
25 I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus. After having encouraged them by the promise of his own coming and that of Timothy, he fortifies them also for the present, by sending previously Epaphroditus, that in the mean time, while he waited the issue of his own affairs, (for this was the cause of his delay,) they might not be in want of...