Children of the Day in a Community of Care

“Times and seasons” pairs chronos, time as it passes, with kairos, the appointed moment. It is the same pair Jesus used in Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons”. “Ye have no need that I write” repeats 4:9, Paul’s courteous way of saying they have already been taught.

“Perfectly” is akribos, accurately: the Thessalonians know with precision that the day cannot be known with precision. “The day of the Lord” is the prophets’ phrase (Amos 5:18, Joel 2:31), and the thief in the night reaches back to a saying of Jesus preserved in Matthew 24:43.

The pronoun turns from “ye” to “they”: the people saying Peace and safety are outsiders. The echo is Jeremiah 6:14, “Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” Labour pains cannot be dated to the hour, but once begun they cannot be stopped, and “shall not escape” is the Greek double negative, the strongest denial the language has.

The doubled “that that” trips modern readers: the first means “so that”, the second points to the day. A few early manuscripts read “as thieves” rather than “as a thief”, turning the picture round so that the day catches out the burglars still at work when the light comes up.

“Children of” is a Hebrew way of saying “belonging to” or “marked by”, as “son of peace” in Luke 10:6. The Dead Sea Scrolls call their own community “sons of light” against “sons of darkness”. Paul slips from “ye are” to “we are” in the same verse, placing himself inside the description.

The verb for sleep has changed. The dead in 4:13-15 “sleep” with koimaomai; here it is katheudo, ordinary sleep, now meaning moral drowsiness. “As do others” is hoi loipoi, “the rest”, the same phrase used in 4:13 for “others which have no hope”.

A plain fact of ancient life, stated without embellishment: sleeping and heavy drinking both belong to the night hours. Peter uses the same assumption in Acts 2:15, where men cannot be drunk because it is only nine in the morning. The two Greek verbs differ slightly, one for getting drunk and one for being drunk.

The armour is borrowed from Isaiah 59:17, where the LORD himself “put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head”. Paul takes God’s own equipment and hands it to the church. A soldier on watch at night is the figure: awake, sober and already dressed.

“Appointed” is etheto, from the verb of 3:3, “we are appointed thereunto”, which there meant appointed to afflictions. God appoints his people to affliction but not to wrath. “Obtain” is peripoiesis, gaining possession of something, and “wrath” recalls 1:10, “Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.”

The only place in the letter where Christ’s death is said to be “for us”, hyper hemon. The verbs for waking and sleeping are the ones from verse 6, not the verb used of the dead in chapter 4. “Together with him” answers 4:17, “so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

The first verb is the one that closed chapter 4, “comfort one another with these words” (4:18), so both halves of the teaching on the Lord’s coming end on the same instruction. “Edify” came into English through Latin aedificare, to build a house, which is also what the Greek oikodomeo means.

“Know” here means to recognise and respect. “Are over you” is proistamenoi, to stand in front of, which can mean to preside or to care for; 1 Timothy 3:4 uses it of a man ruling his own house. No title is given, elder or bishop; the letter names what these people do, not what they are called.

“Very highly” is a triple compound, hyperekperissou, something like “beyond over-abundantly”, the word Paul used for his own praying “exceedingly” in 3:10. Some manuscripts read “be at peace with them” rather than “among yourselves”, which would point the command straight at friction with the leaders just named.

“Unruly” is ataktos, a soldier out of rank; in Greek papyri it also describes an apprentice who skips work. That fits the idle members told in 4:11 to work with their own hands, whom 2 Thessalonians 3:6-11 will name again. “Support” is antechomai, to hold on to, to keep a grip on someone.

The same ban on repaying evil with evil turns up in Romans 12:17 and 1 Peter 3:9, which suggests a saying the churches held in common, going back to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:39. “Follow” is dioko, the verb for hunting down or persecuting: the good is to be chased as hard as an enemy.

Two words in Greek, pantote chairete, fourteen letters, often counted the shortest verse in the Greek New Testament; in English that honour goes to John 11:35. Joy has already appeared under pressure in this letter, the word received “in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost” (1:6).

“Without ceasing” is adialeiptos, the adverb Paul used for his own remembering in 1:3 and thanking in 2:13. He asks the church to do what he has told them he has been doing for them. The sense is persistent, returning prayer, as a person keeps coming back to a thing, not a single unbroken utterance.

“Give thanks” is eucharisteo, the verb that later named the Eucharist, and the first verb of the letter, “We give thanks to God always for you all” (1:2). What Paul did at the start becomes a command at the end. “Concerning you” is eis humas, directed toward you, aimed at these particular people.

A present imperative with a negative in Greek can mean “stop doing this”, which has led some to infer that the Spirit was already being dampened at Thessalonica. Many grammarians warn against pressing that, so it remains an inference. The verb sbennumi is used of lamps and fires, as in Matthew 25:8, “our lamps are gone out.”

“Despise” is exoutheneo, to count as nothing, the verb Luke 18:9 uses of the Pharisee who “despised others”. Prophesyings are the utterances themselves, not the office. One suggested reason for contempt is the kind of claim 2 Thessalonians 2:2 mentions, a message “by spirit” that the day had already come; that link is a reasonable guess, not a statement of the text.

“Prove” is dokimazo, the word for assaying metal or testing coins to see whether they are genuine. Several church fathers, Clement of Alexandria among them, quote a saying they attribute to Jesus, “Be approved money-changers”, and link it with this verse. “Good” is kalon, what is sound and genuine, the coin that rings true.

“Abstain” is apechomai, the verb of 4:3, “that ye should abstain from fornication”, so the ethical teaching of the letter opens and closes on the same word. The two halves of verses 21 and 22 face each other: hold fast to the good, hold off from every kind of evil.

“The very God” is autos ho theos, God himself, the same emphatic opening as the prayer of 3:11. “Wholly” is holoteleis, found nowhere else in the New Testament, complete through and through; “whole” is holokleron, sound in every part, the word used of a sacrificial animal without defect.

The Greek ends “who also will do”, with no object: the King James supplies “it”, and the reader supplies what God will do from the prayer just prayed. “Calleth” is a present participle in Greek, so the call is not only a past event but a continuing one.

Three words in Greek, and some manuscripts add a fourth, “also”: pray also for us, as we have prayed for you. Paul repeats the request at more length in 2 Thessalonians 3:1, asking that the word “may have free course”.

The same greeting closes Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20 and 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Peter 5:14 calls it “a kiss of charity”. Paul cannot greet them in person, so those who hear the letter are to exchange the kiss on his behalf. Justin Martyr, about a century later, describes the kiss given after the prayers in Christian worship.

“I charge you” is enorkizo, to put under oath, a strong word for a request. The plural “we” of the letter gives way to Paul’s own “I”, as it did in 2:18 and 3:5. “Read” means read aloud; most listeners could not read, and this may be the earliest instruction that a Christian letter be read to a whole congregation.

The grace that opened the letter in 1:1 closes it. The King James adds a note after the verse, that the letter was “written from Athens”, but that subscription is a later addition, and Acts 18:5 places Timothy’s return to Paul at Corinth, where most date the letter.