<p>16:12 <i>But as touching Apollos the brother, I pleaded with him to come to you with the brothers; but he was unwilling to come right now, but he will come when he shall have the opportunity</i>- &quot;The brothers&quot; are surely those of :11- the brothers whom Corinth were to appoint to bring the collected funds to Jerusalem (:3). The translation &quot;come to you&quot; could as well be translated 'to accompany with', as if Apollos was intended to hover around them, <i>pros</i> them. Again we see Paul running ahead of himself. The funds had not been collected, and in fact would not be, so it seems from 2 Corinthians. But he asks the church to appoint brothers to carry the funds to Jerusalem, asks the church to send Timothy with those brothers, and now laments that he had asked Apollos to also accompany them, but he had declined. Not surprisingly- for it was evident that Corinth would unlikely raise the funds, and by the time of 2 Corinthians they had not done so, despite Paul's enthusiastic boasting to others about their willingness to do so. The whole impression is of a single individual obsessed with a pet project, and it doesn't quite work out. Apollos was unwilling to give in to Paul's pleading to join in this project. And yet Paul claims that &quot;he will come when he shall have the opportunity&quot;. It is logical to assume that Apollos would have declined an invitation to go to Corinth and accompany brethren to Jerusalem with money which had not been collected, probably never would be, and without the blessing of the Corinthian church, who were surely known as being anti-Paul and a difficult group. But Paul likes to interpret this as 'He can't come at this moment, but he will come when he gets half the chance'. If Paul pleaded with Apollos to come but he declined, then Paul obviously considered that Apollos could make the journey, he could find the time if he wished. But Paul over generously concludes that Apollos does in fact want to come, 'it's just that he's busy right now'. This kind of obsessive even autistic focus can be detected in the sentence structure and path of logic Paul employs in some of his writing. He was inspired and indeed a wonderful brother, but this didn't make him anything less than human.</p>