1 Thessalonians 2:9

Note

Paul has just said that he and his companions were ready to share not only the gospel but their own lives. This verse is the proof that he meant it: they worked night and day so as to be a burden to no one while they preached.

Paul worked with his hands. In Corinth he stayed with Aquila and Priscilla "because they were tentmakers by trade, just as he was" (Acts 18:3), and he could say to the elders of Ephesus, "these hands of mine have ministered to my own needs" (Acts 20:34). While he was in Thessalonica the church at Philippi sent him help "again and again" (Philippians 4:16), yet he did not stop working, and in the second letter he says so once more (2 Thessalonians 3:8).

The noun euangelion (εὐαγγέλιον) is the object of ἐκηρύξαμεν, the aorist of kērussō (κηρύσσω): to proclaim as a herald (κῆρυξ) proclaims, aloud and in public. The herald's verb is joined to the word for good news. The participle "working" is tied to that main verb, so the Greek lets us picture the two together: the work went on while the preaching did, perhaps in the same place and the same hours. And once more Paul calls the message the gospel of God.

"Labor and toil" pairs κόπος, labour to the point of weariness, with mochthos (μόχθος), hard toil. The KJV's "labour and travail" used a word that in its day meant both hard work and the pains of childbirth. Set between the nursing mother of verse 7 and the father of verse 11, the older word is apt, though the Greek itself means toil. Where the KJV and the LSV say "preached", the BSB says "proclaimed", which stays closer to the herald.

Matthew Henry draws from this paragraph a lesson for every believer: "We should not only be faithful to our calling as Christians, but in our particular callings and relations" Matthew Henry. Paul's trade was part of his witness.

The early church came to know why this mattered. The Didache, from about AD 100, tells a visitor who wants to settle and has a trade to work for his bread (chapter 12) the Didache. Paul had walked that road long before it was written down. To the Corinthians he would ask, "What then is my reward?" and answer, "That in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge" (1 Corinthians 9:18).

The Thessalonians received the gospel without paying for it, because the men who brought it earned their own bread, working night and day. It came to them as a gift, not a transaction, and those hands bore witness to it.