1 Thessalonians 1:9

B, with 20 minuscules, sah cop, Thdrt Dam Oec, reads περι υμων (for ημων), a mistake due perhaps to the prominent υμων of 1 Thessalonians 1:8; WH place υμων in the margin.

The εχομεν of T.R. is found only in a few minuscules; εσχομεν in all uncials and best versions. Present and 2nd aorist forms of this verb are often confused through the resemblance of uncial ε and c.

9. αὐτοὶ γὰρ περὶ ἡμῶν�, κ.τ.λ. For of their own accord they (the people we meet with in Macedonia or Achaia, or hear from “in every place”) report about us (or you: see Textual Note). It must be remembered that these are the statements (1 Thessalonians 1:7-9) not of St Paul alone, but of Silvanus and Timothy besides, who had newly joined the Apostle at Corinth after separately visiting Macedonia and traversing a wide extent of country.

ὁποίαν (the proper indirect interrog.: cf. note on οἶοι, 1 Thessalonians 1:5) εἴσοδον—qualem ingressum (Calvin, Beza), rather than introitum (Vulg.)—what sort of an entrance, how happy and successful (1 Thessalonians 1:5; 1 Thessalonians 2:1 f., where εἴσοδος recurs; 1 Thessalonians 2:13 : cf. also Hebrews 10:19). The noun nowhere implies reception.

καὶ πῶς ἐπεστρέψατε πρὸς τὸν θεὸν� κ.τ.λ. completes the report of the success of the writers, just as 1 Thessalonians 1:6 completed the description of the conversion of the readers given by 1 Thessalonians 1:5. Πῶς—the direct for indirect interrogative (ὅπως in this sense only in Luke 24:20 in N.T.; otherwise telic)—implies the manner as well as the fact of conversion: see 1 Thessalonians 1:6; 1 Thessalonians 2:13. Ἐπ-in the verb marks not regression (as in Galatians 4:9, &c.), but direction (as in Acts 9:40); πρός, as in 2 Corinthians 3:16, gives the object toward which “you turned,” resuming the phrase of 1 Thessalonians 1:8—oftener ἐπί in this connexion (as in Galatians 4:9; Acts 14:15); εἰς, with characteristic difference, in Matthew 12:44; Luke 2:39, &c.

The aforesaid report describes a conversion from Paganism to the service of “the (one, true) God”—πρὸς τὸν θεόν. The Thessalonian Christians had been mainly heathen, “not knowing God” (2 Thessalonians 1:8; Galatians 4:8; cf. Galatians 2:14 below); there was, however, a sprinkling of Jews among them, with “a great multitude” of proselytes more or less weaned previously from idolatry, according to Acts 17:4. “The God” whom they now “serve,” is a God living and real (vivo et vero). This is the dialect of O.T. faith; so much might have been said of converts to Judaism.

ζῶντι καὶ� is categorically opposed to τῶν εἰδώλων: Jahveh (Jehovah), the HE IS (see Exodus 3:13 f., for the Israelite reading of the ineffable Name; and cf. Isaiah 42:8; Isaiah 45:5 ff., Isaiah 45:18; Isaiah 45:21 ff., for its controversial use against heathenism), is by His very name “the true God and the living God” (Jeremiah 10:10); all other deities are therefore dead and unreal—mere λεγόμενοι θεοί (1 Corinthians 8:4 ff.). In this sense they are stigmatized as εἴδωλα, the Septuagint rendering of אֱלִילִים (nothings, Psalms 97:7, &c.), or הֲבָלְים (vapours, emptinesses, Deuteronomy 32:21, &c.). Εἴδωλον denotes an appearance, an image or phantom without substance: the word was applied by Homer to the phantasms of distant persons imposed on men by the gods (Iliad 449; Odyssey iv. 796); cf. Bacon’s idola tribus, specus, &c. In the Theœtetus 150 a c e and 151 c, Plato identifies εἴδωλον with ψεῦδος (cf. Romans 1:23; Romans 1:25) and contrasts it with what is ἀληθινόν, γνήσιον, ἀληθές. Similarly, heathen gods and their rites are styled τὰ μάταια in Acts 14:15, as occasionally in the LXX. (cf. Romans 1:21; Ephesians 4:17 : for the O.T., see in illustration Psalms 115:4-8; Isaiah 44:9-20; Jeremiah 10:1-11). St Paul was powerfully impressed by observation with the hollowness of the Paganism of his time. Ἀληθινός, verus—to be distinguished from ἀληθής (cf. Romans 3:4), verax—denotes truth of fact, the correspondence of the reality to the conception or the name (see e.g. John 15:1; John 17:3; 1 John 5:20); θεὸς� is the “very God” of the Nicene Creed.

With δουλεύειν, to serve as bondmen, cf. St. Paul’s habitual designation of himself as δοῦλος Χριστοῦ, once δοῦλος θεοῦ (Titus 1:1),—the O.T. עֶבֶד יהוה. Religious obligation was conceived under this usual form of personal service, which implied ownership on the master’s and absolute dependence on the servant’s part. Elsewhere St Paul corrects the term in contrasting Christian and pre-Christian service to God—“no longer a slave but a son”: Galatians 4:1-10; Romans 8:12-17; cf. John 8:31-36; 1 John 3:1 f.