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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
19, 20. τὸ πνεῦμα μὴ σβέννυτε, προφητείας μὴ ἐξουθενεῖτε. The Spirit do not quench; prophesyings do not despise. From joy, prayer, and thanksgiving it is a natural transition to the Spirit and prophesying (see 1Th 1:6; also Rom 8:26; Eph 6:18; Jud 1:20). “Praying” and “prophesying” are kindred exercises (1Co 11:4). The R.V. reduces the stop between these injunctions to a semi-colon: they are parallel, the second explaining the first. Possibly, as Lightfoot says, “there was the same tendency amongst the Thessalonians to underrate prophecy in comparison with other more striking gifts of the Spirit, which St Paul condemns in writing to the Corinthians”; see 1Co 14:1, ζηλοῦτε τὰ πνευματικά, μᾶλλον δὲ ἵνα προφητεύητε, and the discussion which follows. But the warning against quenching the Spirit is directed, surely, against rationalism rather than fanaticism, against the chill distrust of the more fervid spiritual manifestations which was excited in sober minds at Thessalonica by the extravagance, or insincerity, of such πνευματικοί as e.g. the “prophets” who are virtually censured in the warning of 2Th 2:2, μήτε διὰ πνεύματος. The agitation and morbid anxiety respecting the Parousia, which both Epistles seek to allay, was fed by “prophesyings” upon this subject; in such prophesyings Millenarianism has at all times abounded. The scepticism thus awakened tended to discredit prophecy generally in this Church, and with it the whole supernatural agency of the Spirit. That this counsel has in view the reflective and critical part of the Church, is strongly suggested by the δοκιμάζετε of the next exhortation. But this caution is one which St Paul’s general observation of the Greek temper might suggest, without any local occasion.
For προφητεία, cf. Rom 12:6; 1Co 13:2; 1Co 14:6 : it comes by ἀποκάλυψις, as διδαχή by γνῶσις. Prediction is only one branch of “prophecy,” which means etymologically the forth-speaking of that which was hidden in the mind of God and which comes to the προφήτης, for communication to others, through the specific inspiration of His Spirit; see Lightfoot’s note ad loc., and Cremer’s Lexicon s.v. προφήτης. As to the dependence of προφητεία on τὸ πνεῦμα, see further Joe 2:28 f. (1Th 3:1 f., in Hebrew text); Act 2:17; Act 19:6; Act 28:25; Luk 1:67; Rev 1:2; Rev 1:10, &c. Σβέννυτε is a N.T. hap. legomenon: since the Holy Spirit is a “fire” (Act 2:3; cf. Rom 12:11; Act 18:25; Luk 12:49), the arrest of His action is described as a “quenching.” As “resisting the Holy Spirit,” in Act 7:51 (Isa 63:10), describes a perverse unbelief, so “quenching the Holy Spirit” describes a cold scepticism. Prophecy exhibited His working in its vehemence and ardour.
Ἐξουθεν-έω (also in the forms ἐξουδενέω, -όω), a word of the κοινή, “to make utterly nothing of,” “reduce to nought,” is frequent in St Paul (see 1Co 1:28, 2Co 10:10, &c.). This verb denotes contempt objectively, as it bears on the person or thing despised; while καταφρονέω (1Co 11:22) describes contempt subjectively, as it is in the mind of the despiser.