together; and this compassionate gentleness springs from a community of weakness. As we have seen, the weakness Christ experienced in his human nature, which is the basis of his fellow feeling with us in our weakness, displayed itself in the temptations with which he had constantly to do battle and in the pain and suffering he endured, culminating in the experience of the ultimate weakness of death (2:9, 10, 14, 17, 18; 4:15). Our author, however, is now speaking of that weakness which is the consequence