Greet Apelles, that (τὸν) tested man in Christ; the Lord knows, not we, the tests he stood.
Greet those who belong to Aristobulus' people.[268]
Ver. 11.
Ver. 12.
Greet Herodion, my kinsman.
Greet those who belong to Narcissus' people, those who are in the Lord.
Greet Tryphæna and Tryphosa, (almost certainly, by the type of their names, female slaves,) who toil in the Lord, perhaps as "servants of the Church," so far as earthly service would allow them.
Greet Persis, the beloved woman, (with faultless delicacy he does not here say "my beloved," as he had said of the Christian men mentioned just above,) for she (ἥτις) toiled hard in the Lord; perhaps at some time when St Paul had watched her in a former and more Eastern home.
Ver. 13.
Greet Rufus—just possibly the Rufus of Mar. xv. 21, brother of Alexander, and son of Cross-carrying Simon; the family was evidently known to St Mark, and we have good cause to think that St Mark wrote primarily for Roman readers—Rufus, the chosen man in the Lord, a saint of the élite; and his mother—and mine! This nameless woman had done a mother's part, somehow and somewhere, to the motherless Missionary, and her lovingkindness stands recorded now
"In either Book of Life, here and above."