Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Thessalonians 2:7

"But we were gentle in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own children:" — 1 Thessalonians 2:7 (ASV)

Among you.—Rather, in the midst of you, making the gentleness still more marked. “Her,” in the Greek emphatically her own. The contrast is drawn between the charlatan, licentious, sophistical, fawning, greedy, vainglorious teachers, to whom Greeks were well accustomed, and the Apostles, sitting familiarly like mothers amidst a group of their own children, folding them for warmth to their bosoms. “Keep a mother’s heart for men,” was the advice which made Henri Perreyve’s life so winning (Méditations, p. 87).