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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
7. αὐτοὶ γὰρ οἴδατε. For you know of yourselves—“without our needing to tell it again”: see notes on καθὼς οἴδατε, 1Th 1:5 f., 2Th 2:1, &c.
πῶς δεῖ μιμεῖσθαι ἡμᾶς, in what manner you ought to imitate us—“an abridged expression for πῶς δεῖ ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν ὥστε μιμεῖσθαι ἡμᾶς” (Lightfoot). Πῶς (quali ratione, Bengel) qualifies μιμεῖσθαι rather than δεῖ (cf. 1Th 4:1; Eph 5:15; 1Ti 3:15): not urging the grounds of this duty, but showing the direction in which it lies, the true line of imitation. For μιμεῖσθαι, see notes on 1Th 1:6, and 2Th 3:9 below.
ὅτι οὐκ ἠτακτήσαμεν ἐν ὑμῖν, for we did not act a disorderly part among you. Ἠτακτήσαμεν is misrendered in the Vulg. “inquieti fuimus”; Erasmus better, “praeter ordinem viximus”; Beza, “inordinate nos gessimus”; Calvin, “inordinate egimus.” Another meiosis (cf. οὐ πάντων ἡ πίστις, 2Th 3:2; and θεῷ μὴ ἀρεσκόντων, 1Th 2:15): how far the Apostles were from conduct like this! Ἀτακτέω (= ἀτάκτως περιπατέω, 2Th 3:6; cf. ἀτάκτους, 1Th 5:14)—hap. leg. in N.T.—a military term, applied e.g. to soldiers out of rank: cf. Col 2:5, τὴν τάξιν ὑμῶν καὶ τὸ στερέωμα κ.τ.λ., “your order and the solid front of your faith in Christ.” Officers are as much subject to discipline as the rank and file; it was due to their Churches that the Apostles should set an example of a strictly ordered life; with this example before them, which bore exactly upon the point in question, the readers “know” what the nature of their “imitation” should be. Ὅτι governs along with οὐκ ἠτακτήσαμεν the following οὐδέ clause, which should have been included in the same verse, for it brings out the kind of disorder reproved:—