Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Thessalonians · About this commentary
Left Behind at Athens
1 Thessalonians 3:1-3
1 Therefore when we couldn’t stand it any longer, we thought it good to be left behind at Athens alone, · WEB
Paul gave up his only companion rather than keep waiting for news.
When we couldn't stand it any longer, we thought it good to be left behind at Athens alone. The verb describes a limit reached — the point at which a person stops enduring something. Paul uses it twice in five verses.
The cost is in the word alone. Acts shows him in Athens waiting for Silas and Timothy to catch up Acts 17:15–16, and rather than wait he sent away the one man who had reached him. A stranger in a hostile city gave up his companion to buy information.
Timothy's commission has two verbs. To establish you — a builder's word, making something firm — and to comfort you concerning your faith. Paul was not sending an inspector but a support.
The purpose clause names the fear: that no one would be moved by these afflictions. The verb pictures a dog wagging, and so a person shaken loose from a fixed position.
And then a sentence that refuses to treat the suffering as a surprise: you know that we are appointed to this task. Not permitted, not warned about — appointed. The affliction was in the arrangement, and saying so is itself part of the steadying.
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