1 Thessalonians 2:15

15. ιδιους (before προφητας): a Syrian insertion.

15. τῶν καὶ τὸν κύριον�, who both killed the Lord, even Jesus. To have “slain the Lord,” who bears the title of God, “Him whom they were bound to serve” (Jowett)—the most appalling of crimes (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:8, τὸν κύριον τῆς δόξης ἐσταύρωσαν); that “Lord,” moreover, Jesus, their Saviour (Matthew 1:21; Acts 4:12), and such as “Jesus” was known to be. The emphasis thrown by the separation on the double name brings into striking relief the Divine glory and the human character of the Slain; cf. Acts 2:36. These words echo those in which Jesus predicted His death in the parable of Luke 20:9-18 and Mark 12:1-11.

καὶ τοὺς προφήτας καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐκδιωξάντων. Jesus had represented His murder as the culmination of that of “the prophets” (Luke 11:47-51; Luke 13:33; Luke 20:9-16), a charge repeated by St Stephen in Saul’s hearing (Acts 7:52); cf. also Romans 11:3; 1 Kings 19:10; 1 Kings 19:14; Jeremiah 2:30; Nehemiah 3:26 : these parallels support the usual construction of the clause, who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out. But “the prophets” here follow “the Lord Jesus,” making something of an anti-climax if governed by ἀποκτεινάντων. Grammatically this object may just as well be attached to ἐκδιωξάντων and coordinated to ἡμᾶς, with the comma placed after Ἰησοῦν: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and drove out (in persecution) the prophets and ourselves. Our Lord identified His Apostles with the O. T. prophets in persecution (see Matthew 5:12); in the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (Matthew 21:33 ff; cf. Matthew 23:34), it was “some” of the servants that “they slew,” as they did “the Son” at last, while all were persecuted (cf. again Acts 7:52). “The prophets” and the Apostles were alike bearers of “the word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13), and received the same treatment from His unworthy people. Ἐκ-διώκω, “to persecute out (of a place),” is the verb found in many ancient copies in Luke 11:49, with the same twofold object: “I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and will persecute”; see also Ps. 118:157, Sir 30:19 (LXX). This is precisely what befell St Paul at Thessalonica and Berœa in turn.

καὶ θεῷ μὴ�. To “please God,” to “walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing,” is a favourite Pauline definition of the true religious life (see 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Thessalonians 4:1; also Romans 8:8; Romans 12:1; 2 Corinthians 5:9, &c., and Hebrews 11:5 f.),—to which the behaviour of “the Jews” stands in glaring contrast. A tragic meiosis,—to describe as “not pleasing” the conduct of those on whom God’s heaviest “wrath” descends (1 Thessalonians 2:16). The participle after the article is regularly negatived by μή (see A. Buttmann, N.T. Grammar, p. 351), which tends to oust οὐ with all participles in later Greek; cf. τὰ μὴ εἰδότα, 1 Thessalonians 4:5. For the sentiment, cf. Isaiah 65:5; Jeremiah 32:30.

καὶ πᾶσιν�, and (are) to all men contrary. So the terrible indictment of “the Jews” culminates. The two participles and the adjective ἐναντίων, under the regimen of the single article, form a continuous, closely linked statement. Tacitus and Juvenal, who knew the Jews at Rome, speak of their sullen inhumanity as a notorious fact, the former referring to their “adversus omnes alios hostile odium” (Hist. 1 Thessalonians 2:5), and the latter to their rule, “Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti, Quæsitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos” (Sat. xiv. 103 f.). Testimonies to the like effect may be gathered from Philostratus, Vita Apoll. Tyan. v. 33; Diodorus Siculus xxxiv. 1; Josephus, contra Apion. ii. 10, 14. The offer of “the good news” of Christ to the heathen provoked Jewish jealousy and contempt to fury: when the Gentiles flocked to St Paul’s preaching in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, the Jews present, ἰδόντες τοὺς ὄχλους, ἐπλήσθησαν ζήλου (Acts 13:45); when the Apostle in his speech of defence at Jerusalem appealed to the Lord’s command, “Go, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles,” hearing him ἄχρι τούτου τοῦ λόγου, they burst out, Αἶρε� (Acts 22:22). These were incidents in a constant experience.

There is a connexion in the nature of things between the two last clauses. The sense of God’s displeasure sours a man’s temper toward his fellows; unbelief breeds cynicism. The Judenhasse of modern times is a lamentable result of the ancient feud of Jew and Gentile, of which the figure of Shylock and his part in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice afford a classical illustration.