1 Thessalonians 2:7

7. A nurse An image of tenderness, superior knowledge, and care. “Paul,” says Renan, “was an admirable missionary.… Never was the problem of human education grasped in a livelier and more intimate manner. Do not imagine that his ascendency was won by flattery, by gentleness.(?) No; Paul was churlish, ugly, at times passionate.… He commands; he blames severely: he speaks of himself with assurance, and proposes himself as a model without hesitation.” (But see our notes on Acts 20:17-38.) “But what loftiness! What purity! What disinterestedness!” The word nurse means nourisher, one who suckles, and includes the mother here, as indicated by the word her own children. It means a being who imparts physiological life from her own interior life. And this thought is intensely carried out in the following verse.