Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Thessalonians 2:11 - 2:11
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
11, 12. καθάπερ οἴδατε ὡς ἕνα ἕκαστον … παρακαλοῦντες κ.τ.λ. The ὡς … παρακαλοῦντες sentence is not completed, and ἕνα ἕκαστον remains in suspense, an object with no verb to govern it. The participial clause begins as if leading up to a finite verb, such as ἐνουθετοῦμεν (Act 20:31), or ἀνετρέφομεν (see τροφός, 1Th 2:7), or ἐτηροῦμεν (1Th 5:23); but the writer is carried away by the extension of his third participle, μαρτυρόμενοι, and in rounding off this clause forgets the missing verb, the sense of which is however practically supplied by the full import of the three participles. Similarly διὰ τοὺς παρεισὰκ. ψευδαδέλφους is left suspended in Gal 2:4, and τὸ ἀδύνατον τοῦ νόμου in Rom 8:3; for a like participial anacoluthon, see 2Co 7:5 b. It is more natural, and much more after St Paul’s manner, to admit such a lapse than to suppose that ἐγενήθημεν (1Th 2:10) is resumed in thought across the intervening καθάπερ οἴδατε to support the participles, and that ἕνα ἕκαστον is conceived as object to παρακαλοῦντες κ.τ.λ., to be quickly followed by the pleonastic ὑμᾶς: see Ellicott ad loc.
Καθάπερ is more emphatic than καθὼς οἴδατε (1Th 2:2, &c.),—“as verily,” “even as”; cf. 1Th 3:6, &c. Οἴδατε ὡς—for ὄτι, as often in classical Greek—implies the manner as well as the bare fact: “you know the way in which (we dealt with) each one”; cf. ἐπίστασθε πῶς, Act 20:18, and see note on οἶοι (ποῖοι), 1Th 1:5, for the difference between ὡς and πῶς. For ἕνα ἕκαστον, asserting the individualizing care of these true pastors, cf. Act 20:31; Joh 10:3 b.
ὡς πατὴρ τέκνα ἑαυτοῦ adds the father’s heedful oversight to the mother’s tender self-devotion (1Th 2:7; cf. τὰ ἑαυτῆς τέκνα): with every kind of solicitude the missionaries “imparted their souls” (1Th 2:8) to this Church and made themselves over to it (ὑμῖν … ἐγενήθημεν, 1Th 2:10). St Paul calls the Corinthians also (1Co 4:14, 2Co 6:13), and the Galatians (Gal 4:19), and Timothy (2Th 1:2, &c.), his τέκνα; so in 1 John τεκνία, passim. 1Co 4:14-21 gives a different turn to the figure.