1 Thessalonians 2:9

9. Ye remember Paul is solicitous still to ground his statements in their consciousness. All this picture is daguerreotyped on the tablets of their memory, and he does but retrace it.

Labour and travail Two Greek words similarly coupled in 2 Corinthians 11:27, (translated “weariness and painfulness,”) and 2 Thessalonians 3:8; the latter word last, climactically as the stronger term. Wordsworth derives the former, in Greek, from a word signifying to hew, and the latter from two words signifying to carry the logs. If this be a true etymology the words form a proverbial phrase, hewing and lugging, borrowed from the dialect of the primitive fellers of forests. Very applicable, for Paul is here an aboriginal feller of moral forests.

Night and day By night, that he might preach and visit by day; but also by day, that he might make sure of his three sabbath days of synagogue service, Acts 17:2. His labouring was probably at his trade of tent-making, on which see note, Acts 18:3. From Philippians 4:15-16, it appears that Paul did have Philippian aid in his travelling expenses, and also support at Thessalonica. He was aided by the Macedonians at Corinth. Paul was a large taxer of the full formed and powerful Churches; but mainly on other objects than himself.

Night and day It is a striking proof how deeply the Genesis history was enshrined in the Hebrew mind of all ages, that night was always imaged as predecessor of day. And this is philosophical, for darkness, as a mere absence, must exist until light, as the positive entity, comes into being. But, though philosophical, it is not the popularly natural impression; for the obvious daily thought is, that night is the closing appendix to the day, and each new morning is the fresh beginning. Hence, though the Greek cosmogony, borrowing from the primitive, held chaos and night to precede day, yet that order was lost in popular phrase, which was day and night; as is the case, in spite of biblical history, with us of modern Christian Europe and America.

Wordsworth suggestively notes the varied New Testament usage. St. Paul always puts night before day, 1 Thessalonians 3:10; 1 Timothy 5:5; 2 Timothy 1:3. St. Luke, puts day first, Acts 9:24; except where he gives, in Paul’s two speeches, the reverse order, Acts 20:31, and (by the true reading) Acts 26:7. This is a wonderful occult proof, first, that Luke was a Gentile; and, second, that his record is a true verbal report of St.

Paul’s language. Luke 2:37 is probably in a Hebrew document. In Luke 18:7, he probably gives his own order.

St. John gives, in the Apocalypse, the phrase day and night five times, Revelation 4:8; Revelation 7:15; Revelation 12:10; Revelation 14:11, ( day nor night,) Revelation 20:10. This has an important bearing on the question whether John means the Hebrew hours in John 19:14.