Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Thessalonians · About this commentary
Working Night and Day
1 Thessalonians 2:9-10
9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and travail; for working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God. · WEB
The maternal image is followed immediately by manual labor, and the reason given is that nobody should be charged for the gospel.
You remember, brothers, our labor and travail. Two words for hard work, and the second carries the sense of exhausting effort.
Working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God. The trade behind that is recorded in Acts — tentmaking, worked alongside Aquila and Priscilla in the very city Paul was writing from Acts 18:3 — and he makes the same point to this church again in the second letter, where the example becomes an argument against idleness 2 Thessalonians 3:8.
The phrase that we might not burden any of you names the purpose. Not asceticism, and not a claim that ministers should never be supported, which Paul argues against at length elsewhere. In a city he had entered as an unknown, being unpaid removed the one objection that would have stuck.
Verse 10 calls two witnesses again, and this time together: you are witnesses, and God is. How holy, righteously, and blamelessly we behaved toward you who believe. The three adverbs cover conduct toward God, toward others, and in the judgment of anyone watching.
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