2 Thessalonians 3:12

2 Thessalonians 3:12. With quietness they work, and eat their own bread. One of the Jewish Rabbis says: ‘When a man eats his own bread, he has quietness and composure of mind; but when he eats the bread of his parents or of his children not to speak of the bread of strangers he loses this quietness of mind.' But the quietness Paul refers to is opposed to the restless, meddlesome life some of the Thessalonians were leading. He strongly condemns this excitement and love of notoriety. ‘If there be anything true, it is this: that, for the greater part of men, the most favourable discipline of holiness will be found exactly to coincide with the ordinary path of duty; and that it will be most surely promoted by repressing the wanderings of imagination, in which we frame to ourselves states of life and habits of devotion remote from our actual lot, and by spending all our strength in those things, great or small, pleasing or unpalatable, which belong to our calling and position' (Manning).