1 Thessalonians 2:16

κωλυόντων κ. τ. λ., defining (Luke 11:52) from the Christian standpoint that general and familiar charge of hatred to the human race (ἐναντίων κ. τ. λ.) which was started by the exclusiveness of the ghetto and the synagogue. ἔφθασε κ. τ. λ., “the Wrath has come upon them,” apparently a reminiscence of Test. Levi. vi. 11. This curt and sharp verdict on the Jews sprang from Paul's irritation at the moment. The apostle was in no mood to be conciliatory. He was suffering at Corinth from persistent Jewish attempts to wreck the Christian propaganda, and he flashes out in these stern sentences of anger. Later on (Romans 9-11.) he took a kinder and more hopeful view, though even this did not represent his final outlook on the prospects of Judaism. Consequently, it is arbitrary to suspect 1 Thessalonians 2:14 (15) 16 as a later interpolation, written after 70 A.D. (cf. the present writer's Hist. New Testament, pp. 625, 626). But the closing sentence of 1 Thessalonians 2:16 has all the appearance of a marginal gloss, written after the tragic days of the siege in 70 A.D. (so e.g., Spitta, Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, i. 128, 129, Schmiedel, Teichmann, die Paul. Vorstellungen von Auferstehung u. Gericht, 83, Drummond, etc.). The Jews, no doubt, had recently suffered, and were suffering, as a nation in a way which might seem to Paul, in a moment of vehement feeling, a clear proof of condign punishment (so e.g., Schmidt, 86 90). But neither the edict of Claudius nor the bloody feuds in Palestine quite bear out the language of this verse. And ὀργή is surely more than judicial hardening (cf. Dante's Paradiso, vi. 88 93); its eschatological significance points to a more definite interpretation.