1 Thessalonians 5:23

εἰρήνης, with a special allusion to the breaches of harmony and charity produced by vice (cf. connection of 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13 and 1 Thessalonians 4:3 f.), indolence, impatience of authority or of defects in one another (1 Thessalonians 5:13 f.), retaliation (1 Thessalonians 5:15), and differences of opinion (1 Thessalonians 5:19 f.) Such faults affect the σῶμα, the ψυχή and the πνεῦμα respectively, as the sphere of that pure and holy consciousness whose outcome is εἰρήνη. ὑμῶν, unemphatic genitive (as in 1 Thessalonians 3:10; 1 Thessalonians 3:13, cf. Abbott's Johannine Grammar, 2559 a) throwing the emphasis on the following word or words. πνεῦμα is put first, as the element in human nature which Paul held to be most directly allied to God, while ψυχή denotes as usual the individual life. The collocation of these terms is unusual but of course quite untechnical. ἀμέμπτως has almost a proleptic tinge = “preserved entire, (so as to be) blameless at the arrival of,” which has led to the substitution, in some inferior MSS., of εὑρεθείη for τηρηθείη (cf. textual discussion in Amer. Jour. Theol., 1903, 453 f.). The construction is rather awkward, but the general sense is clear. With the thought of the whole verse compare Ps. Sol. 18:6: καθαρίσαι ὁ θεὸς Ἰσραὴλ … εἰς ἡμέραν ἐκλογῆς ἐν ἀνάξει Χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ, also the description of Abraham being preserved by the divine σοφία in Sap. 10:5 (ἐτήρησεν αὐτὸν ἄμεμπτον θεῷ).