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1Th_2:14 is not designed, as Oecumenius, Calvin, and Pelt think, to prove the sincerity with which the Thessalonians received the gospel, but is a proof of ὃς καὶ ἐνεργεῖται , 1Th_2:13. In not shunning to endure sufferings for the sake of the gospel, the Thessalonians had demonstrated that the word of God had already manifested its activity among them, had already become a life-power, a moving principle in them.
ὑμεῖς γάρ ] an emphatic resumption of the previous ὑμῖν τοῖς πιστεύουσιν .
μιμηταί ] imitators, certainly not in intention or design, but in actual fact or result.
ἀδελφοί ] The frequent repetition of this address (comp. 1Th_1:4, 1Th_2:1; 1Th_2:9; 1Th_2:17) is significant of the ardent love of Paul toward the church. That Paul compares the conduct of the Thessalonians with that of the Palestinian churches is, according to Calvin, whom Calixtus follows, designed to remove the objection which might easily arise to his readers. As the Jews were the only worshippers of the true God outside of Christianity, so the attack on Christianity by the Jews might give rise to a doubt whether it were actually the true religion. For the removal of this doubt, the apostle, in the first place, shows that the same fate which had at an earlier period befallen the Palestinian churches had happened to the Thessalonians; and then, that the Jews were the hardened enemies of God and of all sound doctrine. But evidently such a design of the apostle is indicated by nothing, and its supposition is entirely superfluous, as every Christian must with admiration recognise the heroism of Christian resistance to persecution with which the Palestinian churches had distinguished themselves. Accordingly, it was a great commendation of the Thessalonians if the same heroic Christian stedfastness could be predicated of them. This holds good against the much more arbitrary and visionary opinion of Hofmann, that Paul, by the mention of the Palestinian churches, and the expression concerning the Jews therewith connected, designed to meet the erroneous notion or representation of what happened to the readers. As the conversion of the Thessalonians might in an intelligible manner appear in the eyes of their countrymen as a capture of them in the net of a Jewish doctrine, and hence on that side the reproach might be raised that, on account of this strange matter, they had become hostile to their own people; so it was entirely in keeping to show that the apostolic doctrine was anything but an affair of the Jewish people, that, on the contrary, the Jews were its bitterest enemies! Grotius would understand the present participle τῶν σὐσῶν in the sense of the participle of the preterite; whilst, appealing to Act_8:4; Act_11:19, he thinks that the Palestinian churches had by persecutions ceased to exist as such, only a few members remaining. But neither do the Acts justify such an opinion, nor is it in accordance with the words of Paul in Gal_1:22. The further supposition which Grotius adds is strange and unhistorical, that some Christians expelled from Palestine had betaken themselves to Thessalonica, and that to them mainly a reference in our passage is made.
ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ] Oecumenius: εὐφυῶς διεῖλεν · ἐπειδὴ γὰρ καὶ αἱ συναγωγαὶ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐν Θεῷ εἶναι δοκοῦσι , τὰς τῶν πιστῶν ἐκκλησίας καὶ ἐν τῷ Θεῷ καὶ ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ λέγει εἶναι .
ὅτι ] for.
τὰ αὐτά ] the like things, denotes the general similarity of the sufferings endured. Grotius precariously specifies them by res vestras amisistis, pars fuistis ejecti.
συμφυλέτης ] of the same φυλή , belonging to the same natural stock, contribulis, then generally countryman, fellow-countryman, ὁμοεθνής (Hesychius). Comp. Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 172, 471. By συμφυλέται we are naturally not to understand the Jews (Cornelius a Lapide, Hammond, Joachim Lange); for that the expression is best suited to them, as Braun (with Wolf) thinks, whilst possibly Jews of a particular tribe (perhaps of the tribe of Juda or Benjamin) were resident in Thessalonica, only merits to be mentioned on account of its curiosity. Also συμφυλέται is not, with Calvin, Piscator, Bengel, and others, to be understood both of Jews and Gentiles, but can only be understood of Gentiles. To this we are forced—(1) by the sharp contrast of συμφυλετῶν and Ἰουδαίων , which must be considered as excluding each other; (2) by the addition of ἰδιών to συμφυλετῶν , as the great majority of the Thessalonian church consisted of Gentiles; comp. 1Th_1:9. However, although Paul in the expression συμφυλετῶν speaks only of Gentiles as persecutors, yet the strong invective against the Jews which immediately follows (1Th_2:15-16) constrains us to assume that the apostle in 1Th_2:14 had more in his mind than he expressed in words. As we learn from the Acts, it was, indeed, the heathen magistrates by whose authority the persecutions against the Christian church at Thessalonica proceeded, but the proper originators and instigators were here also the Jews; only they could not excite the persecution of the Christians directly, as the Jews in Palestine, but, hemmed in by the existing laws, could only do so indirectly, namely, by stirring up the heathen mob. This circumstance, united with the repeated experience of the inveterate spirit of opposition of the Jews, which Paul had in Asia at a period directly preceding this Epistle (perhaps also shortly before its composition at Corinth), is the natural and easily psychologically explanatory occasion of the polemic in 1Th_2:15-16. Erroneously Olshausen gives the reason; he thinks it added in order to turn the attention of the Christians in Thessalonica to the intrigues of those men with whom the Judaizing Christians stood on a level, as it was to be foreseen that they would not leave this church also undisturbed; against which view de Wette correctly remarks, that there is no trace of such a warning, and that the Thessalonians did not require it, as they had learned sufficiently to know the enmity of the Jews against the gospel.
καθώς ] Instead of this, properly ἅ or ἅπερ should have been put, corresponding to τὰ αὐτά (comp. Php_1:30, τὸν αὐτὸν … οἷον ). However, even in the classics such inexact connections are very frequently found. See Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 426 f.; Bremi, ad Demosth. adv. Phil. I. p. 137; Kühner, II. p. 571. The double καί ( καὶ ὑμεῖς … καὶ αὐτοί ) brings out the comparison.
αὐτοί ] denotes not the apostle and his assistants (Erasmus, Musculus, Er. Schmid), as such a prominent incongruity in the comparison is inconceivable; but the masculine as a recognised free construction (comp. Gal_1:22-23) refers to τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ , thus denotes the Palestinian Christians.