1 Thessalonians 2:18

18. Come unto you He was driven from Thessalonica to Berea. He would have gone back again from Berea to Thessalonica, but Satan inspired the Thessalonian Jews to track him to Berea, and he was driven from Berea seaward to Athens. 1 Thessalonians 3:1.

I Paul An intimation that his we in this connexion means I, and that the language represents his own personal feeling.

Satan The personal devil, (comp. 1 Thessalonians 3:5,) in whose existence, therefore, Paul not merely believes, but refers to his agency even such comparatively trifling and external matters, because therein there lies prepared a hinderance to the kingdom of God, (compare Ephesians 6:12; otherwise Romans 1:13; Romans 15:22; Acts 16:6, sq.) The apostle, then, does not everywhere, and as a matter of course, speak of Satan, but he knows how, with testing insight, to distinguish. In what this Satanic hinderance consisted we know not; but it must have been something of evil, either on the side of the Thessalonians, or on that of Paul. In the first case, we should have to think of the enemies of the gospel at Thessalonica, whose hatred had been a source of danger to the apostle on his arrival at Thessalonica. In the other case, perhaps of trials in the Churches, where Paul had since been, which rendered a removal from them impossible for him. Or, perhaps, of some sickness of the apostle. And in connexion with this we might think of Satan’s messenger, (2 Corinthians 12:7,) a topic, it is true, on which we know nothing certain. (Comp. also 1 Thessalonians 3:7.) It is even very possible that both kinds of reasons concurred: that the first time, for example, (and this would best agree with 1 Thessalonians 2:17,) Paul desired to turn back again to Thessalonica from Berea, but was hindered in that by the Thessalonian Jews. Acts 17:13.

Wordsworth notes that the Hebrew name Satan is remarkable in this first of St. Paul’s epistles.