Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Thessalonians · About this commentary
Our Crown of Rejoicing
1 Thessalonians 2:17-20
17 But we, brothers, being bereaved of you for a short season in presence, not in heart, tried even harder to see your face with great desire, · WEB
Paul says he was orphaned by the separation, tried repeatedly to return, and names them as what he will have to show at the end.
Being bereaved of you for a short season in presence, not in heart. The verb means to be orphaned — a startling word for an absent founder to use of himself, and it inverts the parental images of verses 7 and 11. The father who nursed them describes himself as the child left behind.
He tried, more than once. The parenthesis is emphatic: indeed, I, Paul, once and again. The letter's only first-person singular, spent on insisting the attempts were real.
But Satan hindered us. The word describes cutting a road to stop an army's advance. Paul does not explain the mechanism, and Scripture elsewhere has him attribute a blocked plan to God's own arrangement Acts 16:6–7 — so he is not offering a general rule about obstacles, only a judgment about this one.
Then verse 19 asks what he actually has. What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? The crown is the victor's wreath rather than a monarch's, and the answer is not a doctrine or a record of towns evangelized. Isn't it even you, before our Lord Jesus at his coming? A man with no possessions names people, and the chapter ends where every chapter of this letter ends.
settled What this mark means