Matthew Poole Commentary - 2 Thessalonians 3:10 - 3:10

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Matthew Poole Commentary - 2 Thessalonians 3:10 - 3:10


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The words contain a reason, as the illative for imports; but what it refers to is uncertain; most probably a further reason of the apostle’s working with his hands, because when with them he left this command,



that if any would not work, neither should he eat; he would therefore practise himself what he commanded them, and not be thought to be as the Pharisees, binding heavy burdens upon others, and he not touch them himself. And this is another of the commandments which the apostle gave them, which he declared his confidence that they would do, 2Th_3:4. And this command seems grounded upon the law given to Adam: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, Gen_3:19. For when he recommends a practice not directly grounded upon some word of God, or of Christ, or from infallible inspiration, he calls it a permission, as 1Co_7:6; but when otherwise, he saith: I command, yet not I, but the Lord, 1Co_7:10; and calls it the commandment of the Lord, 1Co_14:37. And this in the text is not his alone, but the Lord’s, and is elsewhere mentioned, as Eph_4:28: Let him that stole steal no more, but work with his hands, & c.: see 1Co_7:20. God requires it of us as men, that we may be profitable in the commonwealth, supply our own wants and of those that depend upon us, and have wherewith also to supply the wants of the poor, Eph_4:28, to be kept from the temptations of idleness. Christianity doth not extinguish the profitable laws of nature or nations. Yet this general command admits limitations; if men have ability and opportunity to work, or if the ends of working are not otherwise supplied. For he that lives out of the reason of the law seems not bound by the law; or if the work be mental, and not manual, the law is fulfilled; and the equity of the law reacheth all men so far, as that none ought to be idle and useless in the world. And the apostle’s argument for it in the text is cogent from nature itself; agreeably to that of Solomon, Pro_16:26: He that laboureth laboureth for himself, for his mouth craveth it of him. Whereupon some judge these believing Thessalonians to be generally a people that lived by some handicraft trade, or some other manual labour. And the eating here intended is meant of relief from the stock and charge of the church: such should not be relieved who would not work, as it is in the text; who could, but would not, the fault being in the will.