Since orphanos normally means an orphan, namely a parentless child, some commentators take this as a further example of Paul’s love of mixing metaphors. Having called himself their father, mother, even baby (7, 11), and brother (1, 17), he now also pictures himself as their orphaned child. But the word has a wider sense than children deprived of their parents; it ‘applies also to parents deprived of children’,45 which would link more easily with the earlier father and mother metaphors. But Lightfoot