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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
1Th_4:9. Δέ ] introduces a new requirement.
φιλαδελφία ] brotherly love, i.e. love to fellow-Christians; Rom_12:10; Heb_13:1; 1Pe_1:22; 2Pe_1:7. But the apostle thinks on this not only as a disposition, but also as verifying itself by action, that is to say, as liberality toward needy companions in the faith (comp. ποιεῖτε … εἰς , 1Th_4:10). It is self-evident that this brotherly love does not exclude love to man in general, comp. Gal_6:10; 2Pe_1:7.
When, moreover, the apostle says that he has no need to exhort the Thessalonians to brotherly love, as they practise this already, but nevertheless requires them to increase in it, this is a touch of delicate rhetoric (praeteritio, παράλειψις , see Wilke, neutestamentliche Rhetoric, p. 365), not unusual to Paul (comp. 1Th_5:1; 2Co_9:1; Phm_1:19), in order to gain willing hearts for the fulfilment of an exhortation whose necessity was evident. Chrysostom: Οὐ χρείνα ἔχομεν γράφειν ὑμῖν . Ἐχρῆν οὖν σιωπῆσαι καὶ μηδὲν εἰπεῖν , εἰ μὴ χρεία ἦν . Νῦν δὲ τῷ εἰπεῖν , οὐ χρεία ἐστί , μεῖζον ἐποίησεν ἢ εἰ εἶπεν . Erroneously Estius, to whom Benson assents: Tacite significat, eos omnino opus habuisse admonitione superiori, quae erat de sanctimonia seu munditia vitae; difficile enim erat, homines gentiles immunditiae peccatis assuetos a talibus subito revocare.
αὐτοί ] not equivalent to sponte (Schott), which would not suit θεοδίδακτοι but αὐτοὶ γὰρ ὑμεῖς are to be taken together, and form the contrast to the person of the writer formerly named (however without further emphasis).
θεοδίδακτοι ] an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον in the N. T., but analogous to διδακτοὶ Θεοῦ , Joh_6:45 (Isa_54:13), and by no means un-Pauline, because Paul elsewhere uses πνευματικοί in this sense (Schrader); for πνευματικοί could not here have been put. The expression is not to be taken absolutely in the sense of θεόπνευστοι , according to which εἰς τὸ ἀγαπᾶν ἀλλήλους would only be a more definite epexegesis of it—“so that ye, in consequence of this theopneustia, love one another;” but it contains a blending of two ideas, as properly only διδακτοί ἐστε is expected, but now the source of this instruction is immediately united with the word (without any one exhorting you, you yourselves know, namely, being taught of God, etc.). The knowledge or the instruction is not theoretical, not a knowledge from the Old Testament, not a knowledge from a word of the Lord (Joh_13:34; Baumgarten-Crusius), also not a knowledge from the instructions of the prophets, such as actually were, according to 1Th_5:20, among the Thessalonians (Zachariae), but a practical knowledge which has its ground and origin in the purified conscience of the inner man, effected by God through the communication of the Holy Spirit; consequently a knowledge or instruction of the heart. Moreover, incorrectly Olshausen: “where God teaches, there, the apostle says, I may be silent.” For the stress lies not on the first, but on the second half of θεοδίδακτοι .
εἰς τὸ ἀγαπᾶν ἀλλήλους ] is dependent on the διδακτοί in θεοδίδακτοι , and denotes, under the form of the design at which that instruction aims, its object. Incorrectly Flatt, εἰς denotes quod attinet ad.
REMARK.
Pelt, Schott, de Wette, Hofmann, also Winer, p. 303 [E. T. 426], and Buttmann, Grammatik des neutest. Sprachgebr., Berlin 1859, p. 223 [E. T. 259], consider the reading of the Receptus: οὐ χρείαν ἔχετε γράφειν ὑμῖν (see critical remark), as correct Greek, appealing to the frequent use of the infinitive active, where one would expect the infinitive passive (see Kühner, II. p. 339). I cannot agree with this; on the contrary, most decidedly deny the applicability of that use to our passage. For, in the instances given, the characteristic distinction is throughout observable, that the infinitive active expresses the verbal idea in a vague generality, entirely free from any personal reference, so that this active infinitive, in its import and value, can scarcely be distinguished from an absolute accusative. Comp. for example, Sophocles, Oed. Col. 37: ἔξελθʼ · ἔχεις γὰρ χῶρον οὐχ ἁγνὸν πατεῖν .
Thucydides, i. 38: Ἦν … ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς … ἄξιος θαυμάσαι .
Euripides, Med. 318: λέγεις ἀκοῦσαι ìáëèÜê ’.
Comp. also Heb_5:11 : λόγος δυσερμήνευτος λέγειν . Entirely different from these is our passage, where γράφειν , by means of ὑμῖν , instead of forming an absolute statement, is put in a special personal reference to the readers; indeed, as the subject of γράθειν can only be the apostle, in a special personal reciprocal reference to Paul and the Thessalonians, and accordingly the whole expression acquires an individual concrete form. If ἔχετε is not to be without meaning, it would require accordingly either ἐμὲ γράφειν , or, as in 1Th_5:1, the passive γράφεσθαι to be written. For that, as Bouman, Chartae theolog. I. p. 65, and Reiche, p. 339, think, ἐμέ or ἡμᾶς , or rather the indefinite τινά , readily suggest themselves to be supplied, and that the more so, as the necessity of some such supplement is obvious from the following θεοδίδακτοι (Bouman), can hardly be maintained. Also Heb_5:12, to which an appeal is made, proves nothing, for here from a similar reason τινά is to be accented (with Lachmann) instead of τίνα ; whereby the reference and the relation of the words are entirely transformed. Comp. my commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews , 3 d ed. p. 188 f.