Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - 1 Thessalonians 2:9 - 2:9
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
To make good what he had asserted before about their integrity in preaching the gospel, that it was without covetousness, and vain-glory, &c., and about their great affection to them therein, he appeals to their own memory.
Our labour and travail: labour, in what we suffered, attended with care and solicitude of mind, as the word imports; and travail, in what we did, attended with weariness, as some distinguish of the words.
For labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you; this refers to some bodily labour they used, which I find not mentioned in the story while they were at Thessalonica, though Paul did practise it at Corinth, Act_18:3. To prevent scandal and misconstruction that may arise from receiving maintenance, and in case of the church’s poverty, the apostle would refuse it; but without respect to these he pleaded it at his due, 1Co_9:1, &c. And his refusing was no work of supererogation, as the papists plead hence; for in such cases it was a duty with respect to the honour of his ministry; so that it ought not to pass into a rule, either that ministers in no case may labour with their hands to get their bread, or that they ought so to do always, as some would conclude hence, and preach freely. However, he commends them that they forgot not the labour and travail they underwent for their sake, and that both night and day, which implies assiduity and diligence, as 1Th_3:10 Psa_1:2 Luk_2:37; and so to be taken here. Though it may signify their spending part of the night as well as the day in some bodily labour, (the same we read 2Th_3:8), yet not to be understood as if they spent the whole night and day therein; for how then could they have preached the gospel to them, as he here addeth; and they would take nothing of maintenance from any of them, or be chargeable or burdensome to them; not from the poor, to whom it might really be a burden, nor from the rich, who yet might be backward, and account it a burden.