1 Thessalonians 2:16

BD* alone have preserved εφθακεν—the less obvious, but intrinsically better reading; cf. Ephesians 1:20, ενηργηκεν (-σεν).

DG latt vg Ambrst, with Western license, gloss οργη by του θεου.

16. κωλυόντων ἡμᾶς τοῖς ἔθνεσιν λαλῆσαι ἵνα σωθῶσιν, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles in order that they may be saved. As much as to say, “These Jews would stop our mouths if they could, and prevent us uttering a single word to you about the Gospel; they would gladly see all the Gentiles perish.” While many individual Jews were of a humaner spirit, this was the dominant feeling and the cause of the murderous enmity that pursued the Apostle Paul, bringing about his long imprisonment and finally his death. Here he exposes the motives of his traducers: they poisoned the minds of the Thessalonians against him to rob them of the Gospel of salvation; cf. the denunciation of Jewish Christian proselytizers in Galatians 6:12 f.

Κωλυόντων, anarthrous participle, in explanatory apposition to the last clause (or, perhaps, to the two last clauses, θεῷ … ἐναντίων). This verb in pres. and impf. is regularly tentative: “being fain to forbid.” Ἵνα is so weakened in later Greek, that λαλῆσαι ἵνα κ.τ.λ. might mean “to tell the Gentiles to be saved—to bid them be saved”: “a periphrasis for εὐαγγελίζεσθαι τοῖς ἔθνεσιν” (Ellicott). This usage is clear in the case of the verb εἰπεῖν in Luke 4:3; Luke 10:40; but it does not occur elsewhere with λαλεῖν, the force of which here lies in its connexion with τοῖς ἔθνεσιν (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:2; also Acts 4:17; Acts 11:19 f., John 4:27; 1 Corinthians 3:1, for the stress on the person addressed in construction with λαλεῖν; and Ephesians 3:8, for τοίς ἔθνεσιν in like emphasis): the Jews would not have a word said to the Gentiles “with a view to effect” their salvation. For ἵνα σωθῶσιν, cf. 1 Corinthians 10:33; 2 Timothy 2:10.

εἰς τὸ� states the issue for the Jews of their sustained and violent resistance to the word of God, now consummated by their rancorous opposition to the Gentiles’ receiving it. On εἰς τό, see note on 1 Thessalonians 2:12; the preposition may signify consequence here, as in 2 Corinthians 8:5 f., Hebrews 11:3, but with a meaning akin to purpose (a blind aim),—“to the effect that,” “in a manner calculated to”—whereas ὥστε (1 Thessalonians 1:8, &c.) expresses bare consequence (“so that,” “so as to”). Ellicott and Bornemann may be right, however, in seeing here the purpose of God, “which unfolds itself in this wilful and at last judicial blindness on the part of His chosen people”: cf. Romans 1:24, διὸ παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεός … εἰς�, where sin is declared to be punished by further and more flagrant sin. The phrase “fill up their sins” recalls Genesis 15:16, οὔπω�—an ominous and humiliating parallel for Israelites; cf. also Daniel 8:23. Still more distinctly the words of Jesus are echoed (Matthew 23:31 f.): υἱοί ἐστε τῶν φονευσάντων τοὺς προφήτας· καὶ ὑμεῖς πληρώσατε τὸ μέτρον τῶν πατέρων ὑμῶν. Ἀνα-πληρόω, “to fill up (to the brim),” implies a measure quite complete: cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8; Romans 2:5 f. Πάντοτε covers the whole ground of 1 Thessalonians 2:15, indicating a course of misdoing repeated at every turn.

That God’s purpose was at work in the above ἀναπληρῶσαι is shown by the last clause, ἔφθασεν δὲ ἐπʼ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος, but the (Divine) wrath has hastened (to come) upon them, to (make) an end. Whose wrath goes without saying; cf. ἡ ὀργή in 1 Thessalonians 1:10, and Romans 5:9. In 1 Thessalonians 1:10 “the wrath” was contemplated in its approaching manifestation to the world; here in its imminence upon the Jewish people: there it is “coming” (ἐρχομένη); here it “has arrived.” Φθάνω—construed with εἰς in Romans 9:31; Philippians 3:16; with ἐπί in Matthew 12:28, &c.—signifies reaching the object aimed at, with the associated idea of speed or surprise; with a direct object, it means to overtake, anticipate (see 1 Thessalonians 4:15). For the element of unexpectedness in the judgement, cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:2 f., and Matthew 24:50; Luke 21:34 f., &c., in our Lord’s prophecies; this sense of φθάνω is unmistakable in Matthew 12:28, and accords with the emphatic position of the verb here. The sentence is prophetic, resembling in its aorist (or perfect: see Textual Note) the Hebrew perfect of prediction (where the certain future is realized in thought); the Apostles infer this from the facts before their eyes. “The Jews” have rejected the Name in which alone there is salvation (Acts 3:19 ff; Acts 4:12); by their crime in killing the Lord Jesus, and by forbidding His Gospel to the world, they have sealed their doom. The tragedy of Israel’s fate hurries visibly to its pre-determined close.

And this calamity will be final—ἔφθασεν (or ἔφθακεν) … εἰς τέλος. In former threatenings God had said, “Yet will I not make a full end” (Jeremiah 4:27, &c.); this time He does make an end—of the Old Covenant and of national Israel. Still Romans 11 opens out a new prospect for the Jewish race; after all it is εἰς τέλος, not εἰς τὸ τέλος, that is written. For St Paul’s use of τέλος as implying the goal and terminus of some Divine dispensation, cf. Romans 10:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11; 1 Corinthians 15:24; also Luke 22:37. In Luke 18:5; John 13:1, εἰς τέλος has much the same force as here, meaning not at last, but finally (so as to reach an end), by way of crown and finish to the matter in hand.

Within twenty years of the writing of this Letter Jerusalem fell, after the most dreadful and calamitous siege known in history; and the Jewish people ever since have wandered without a home and without an altar. “Tristis exitus,” writes Bengel: “urgebat miseros ira Dei, et εἰς τέλος urbem cum templo delevit.”