Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 Thessalonians 2:16

"forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved; to fill up their sins always: but the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." — 1 Thessalonians 2:16 (ASV)

Mention of “the Jews” (v.14) furnishes Paul an occasion to digress slightly and deliver a violent criticism of this persecuting element among them. Such harsh language is markedly out of character for Paul as we know him from his other writings. He is renowned for his desire to see the salvation of his blood relatives (Romans 9:1–3; Romans 10:1), regardless of how much he had suffered personally at their hands (2 Corinthians 11:24, 26). Exactly what provoked this sudden outburst cannot be known with certainty. An accumulation of hostile acts probably played a part. The writer had been chased out of Damascus (Acts 9:23–25) and Jerusalem (Acts 9:29–30) by his own people not long after his conversion. His message was rejected and his party driven out of Pisidian Antioch by them (Acts 13:45–46, 50). At Iconium the Jews poisoned people’s minds against Paul and Barnabas and ultimately forced them out (Acts 14:2, 5–6). They made a special journey to Lystra to instigate an uprising that produced Paul’s stoning and being left for dead (Acts 14:19). Jewish opposition continued to hound the missionary band into the second journey, specifically at Thessalonica, again producing Paul’s exit (Acts 17:5, 10). Even now as Paul pens these words from Corinth, a united attack has been mounted against him by the city’s Jewish residents (Acts 18:6, 12–13). Couple with this the present plight of the Thessalonian Christians , ultimately traceable to Jewish opponents, and it is no wonder that Paul uses the occasion to recount their consistent opposition to the Lord Jesus. The acme of the Jews’ opposition is their part in the death of the Lord Jesus. Hence, Paul places this crime first among their offenses (v.15). By persuasion of the Jewish leaders, the Roman authorities crucified Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:8). Though joint responsibility was shared by Gentiles and Jews (Acts 4:27), at this point Paul lays guilt for the crime on Israel. It was the exalted Lord of glory against whom this heinous crime was committed. In the NIV, “the prophets” (v.15) are grouped with “the Lord Jesus” as murder victims of the Jews. It is true that many OT prophets died in this way (cf. 1 Kings 19:10; Matthew 23:31, 35, 37; Acts 7:52; Romans 11:3). More important in this connection is Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, in which killing some of the servants (i.e., prophets) was preliminary to killing the son (Matthew 21:35–39; Mark 12:5–8). On the other hand, it seems better to connect “the prophets” with “us” in v.15 and translate this part of the verse, “drove out the prophets and us.” If the parable of the vineyard furnishes a valid background, connecting “the prophets” with “the Lord Jesus” is unsatisfactory, for a chronological order is not observed and not all the servants in the parable are slain. Of greater import in this parable is the idea of the persecution of the servants. In fact, Luke’s account (Lk 20:9-16) does not even mention killing the servants. And to list the prophets alongside Paul’s missionary band furnishes an excellent reason for the past action in “drove... out.” Furthermore, it helps vindicate the missionaries by placing them alongside the honored OT prophets. Paul concludes v.15 by listing two more characteristics of the Jewish antagonists. “They displease God and are hostile to all men.” The former is clearly an understatement, since they were militantly opposed to God. Their zeal for God was not guided by knowledge (Romans 10:2). By opposing God’s Messiah so strenuously, they became God’s adversaries. This could not help but produce hostility to all people—a hostility not arising from a supposed racial superiority, but manifested in stubborn resistance to admitting Jesus’ messiahship. This is proved by their “effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved” (v.16). The Jews were quite resistant to having Jesus’ messiahship and saving work proclaimed among themselves (Acts 4:18–21; 5:27, 28, 40), but Paul’s Gentile mission provoked even more indignation, for it implied God’s forsaking of Israel (cf. Acts 13:46, 48–50; 17:4–5; cf. also Ro 11:11, 25). Thus they sought to eliminate preaching the message of salvation to the Gentiles. “They always heap up their sins to the limit” is the outcome of killing the Lord Jesus and all their subsequent adverse activity. The figure of “heap up... to the limit” (GK 405) points to a well-defined limit of sin appointed by divine decree. After generations of repeated apostasies and rebellion, Israel had arrived at that point. The climax had come especially with rejection of the Messiah himself, and their already-fixed judgment was biding its time till its direct consequences were released. “The wrath [GK 3973] of God” is none other than the eschatological wrath for which the whole world is destined just before Messiah’s kingdom arrives (cf. 1:10). But then why does Paul speak of this wrath as happening in the past (“has come”)? The best explanation comes from comparing the only other NT combinations of the expression “come upon” (Matthew 12:28), where Jesus speaks of the kingdom’s arrival in comparable terminology. The unique force of this verb connotes an arrival on the threshold of fulfillment, not the actual entrance into that experience. That is, the wrath that will precede Christ’s kingdom has come before the Jews’ full experience of that wrath. All prerequisites for unleashing this future torrent have been met. God has set conditions in readiness through the first coming and the rejection of Messiah by this people. A time of trouble awaits Israel, just as it does the rest of the world, and the breaking forth of this time is portrayed as an imminent condemnation. As soon as human conditions in the progress of God’s program warrant, the Jews with the rest of the non-Christian world will be plunged into this awful future turmoil. “At last” should probably be replaced by the NIV note “fully,” the latter meaning that the issue is now settled. The determination cannot be reversed, the obstinate blindness of the Jewish people furnishing obvious proof of this.