1 Thessalonians 2:16. Hindering us from speaking or, seeing that they hinder us; this clause specifying the chief instance in which the Jews incurred the displeasure of God and showed their narrow hatred of their fellows.

To fill up. It was not the Jews' intention that this conduct of theirs should fill up the measure of their sins, but it was God's purpose that thus their probation should come to an end. ‘The Jews were always blind and stubborn; but when they slew their Lord, and drove forth His apostles, they filled up the measure of their iniquities' (Ellicott). ‘In the beginning of sin and evil it seems as if men were free agents and had the power of going on or retreating. But as the crisis of their late approaches, they are bound under a curse; and the form in which their destiny presents itself to our minds, is as though it were certain, and only a question of time now soon it is to be fulfilled' (Jowett).

Always. The whole career of the Jews has ever been contributing to this result.

But. The result of their conduct is contrasted with their intention.

The wrath, i.e. the wrath consequent on their entire sinful history.

Is come upon them. Paul sees the punishment as if it had already fallen. To the apostle, reading the future in the present, the state of Judæa at any time during the last thirty years before the destruction of the city, would have been sufficient to justify the expression, ‘wrath is come upon them to the uttermost' (Jowett).

To the uttermost. The phrase which these words represent may mean at last. Some suppose that it signifies that the wrath had now reached its extreme bound, and would at once pass into inflictive judgments. Probably our own Version conveys the true sense, that the wrath which had been often previously manifested in premonitory calamities, was now to exhaust its whole force upon them.

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Old Testament