Paul is afraid that the Corinthians will be fighting among themselves over rival claims of authority regarding Paul and the “superapostles.”

I may … find you not what I wish … you may find me not what you wish: literally “not as I wish I find you and I be found by you not as you wish.” This rather awkward construction has been rendered in one language as “your way of acting will not please me and my way of acting will not please you.”

The list of evils that Paul fears he will find is like similar lists elsewhere. The first four items in this verse are found in the same order in Gal 5.20. They are all four fairly common words indicating strife, jealousy, fierce indignation, and factiousness. The one translated jealousy may be used in a positive sense (as in 7.7 and 9.2), but here it is clearly negative. Most of the remaining words occur only once or twice in the New Testament.

Quarreling: fighting primarily in the sense of dissension and arguing; jealousy: not in terms of a lover’s attitude toward a rival, but the desire to have what belongs to someone else; anger: more in the sense of outbursts of rage (Good News Translation “hot tempers”); selfishness: working for one’s own interests, including creation of factions; slander: evil speech about others; gossip: spreading false rumors; conceit: arrogance and wrongful pride; disorder: used of political and social disturbances. Disorder occurs five times and has to do with instability or “acting like a mob” (Contemporary English Version). Compare 1 Cor 14.33, where it is translated “confusion.”

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellingworth, Paul. A Handbook on Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .