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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 1 Thessalonians 1:8 - 1:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
From you hath sounded forth (aph' humōn exēchētai). Perfect passive indicative of exēcheō, late compound verb (ex, ēchos, ēchō, ēchē, our echo) to sound out of a trumpet or of thunder, to reverberate like our echo. Nowhere else in the N.T. So “from you” as a sounding board or radio transmitting station (to use a modern figure). It marks forcibly “both the clear and the persuasive nature of the logos tou Kuriou” (Ellicott). This phrase, the word of the Lord, may be subjective with the Lord as its author or objective with the Lord as the object. It is both. It is a graphic picture with a pardonable touch of hyperbole (Moffatt) for Thessalonica was a great commercial and political centre for disseminating the news of salvation (on the Egnation Way).
But in every place (all' en panti topōi). In contrast to Macedonia and Achaia. The sentence would naturally stop here, but Paul is dictating rapidly and earnestly and goes on.
Your faith to God-ward (hē pistis humōn hē pros ton theon). Literally, the faith of you that toward the God. The repeated article makes clear that their faith is now directed toward the true God and not toward the idols from which they had turned (1Th 1:10).
Is gone forth (exelēluthen). Second perfect active indicative of old verb exerchomai, to go out, state of completion like exēchētai above.
So that we need not to speak anything (hōste mē chreian echein hēmās lalein ti). Hōste with the infinitive for actual result as in 1Th 1:7. No vital distinction between lalein (originally to chatter as of birds) and legein, both being used in the Koiné[28928]š for speaking and preaching (in the N.T.).