B. Exhortation Regarding The Disruptive-Idle (3:6-12)
B. EXHORTATION REGARDING THE DISRUPTIVE-IDLE (3:6-12)
At last Paul picks up the issue of the disruptive-idle once again.981 In this instance the problem is spelled out clearly at the end, in verses 11-12, where he indicates what he knows about the situation. Some among them are living ataktōs (= disruptive-idle),982 which is further defined in two ways, beginning with a play on the verb “to work” that is difficult to carry over into English. First (v. 11), they are not “working” (ergazomenous) but are being busybodies (peri-ergazomenous); second (v. 12), he urges on them his twofold corrective: (a) that they work “with quietness” (= not disturbing others), and (b) thus “eat their own bread” (= not sponging off the others). Everything Paul says on either side of these two sentences either gives grounds for the correction (vv. 7-10) or tells the community how to handle the ataktoi if they fail to conform (vv. 6 and 13-15).
It is often suggested that these people are living in this manner because they believe “the day of the Lord is at hand,” which is understood in terms of their being imbued with feverish eschatological expectation.983 But there are simply too many matters in these two letters that call this view into serious question. First, there is not a word in the exhortation that follows that even remotely hints that this was their motive; thus the suggestion is guesswork on the part of some scholars and nothing more. Second, in verse 9 Paul reminds them that he had dealt with this concern “even when we were with you,” and there is nothing in either of these letters indicating that eschatological fervor was there from the beginning. Third, in speaking to eschatological issues in the first letter (4:13-18 and 5:1-11) there is no hint in either case that Paul was speaking to a heightened, or intense, eschatological expectation.
What this means, then, is that we simply do not know why some of them chose not to work and thus to live off the largesse of others. Was it disdain for work itself, because they were people of God’s kingdom and thus a cut above needing to work? Was it pressing the gospel of the kingdom a bit too far, expecting/demanding the rich to care for the poor? Was it related to their eschatological understanding? Was it an attempt on Paul’s part to break up dependencies created by patron-client relationships?984 Or was it just plain laziness? We simply do not know; and in fact getting an answer to this question would hardly affect our understanding of the text at all. All we know for sure is what Paul actually says, “We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive” (v. 11), meaning unwilling to work and thereby disrupting the shalom of the believing community.
Thus one should begin any discussion of this passage by admitting that even though the text itself is generally straightforward and overall easily accessible, in the end we know very little about the specifics as to what occasioned it, and especially so in terms of the motivation on the part of those living so. The only hint we get as to why Paul chose to work with his own hands while among them comes in a secondary way in verse 8, “so that we would not be a burden to any of you.” While that ultimately has theological reasons inherent in it, Paul is not here making his point for those reasons, but for the sake of the well-being of the community as a whole.
Paul’s response to the issue comes in three parts, in keeping with the paragraphing in the TNIV. But on closer inspection it is also one of the more unusual arguments in his extant letters. Thus he begins (vv. 6-10) by addressing the whole community, who are being urged to “shun” those who are unwilling to work. In so doing, the larger part of the section (vv. 7-9) has to do with Paul’s and his companions’ own example with regard to work. The second part (vv. 11-12) is then (finally?) aimed directly at the disruptive-idle themselves, although it still comes to them through what Paul is here telling the rest of the community, who are themselves commended in verse 13. The third part (vv. 14-15) tells the community what to do if the disruptive-idle do not heed the instructions given here; they are to be shunned, not as punishment but as a means of redemption. A careful reading of the whole reveals that Paul is clearly concerned that the disruptive-idle become active participants in the community of faith. Nonetheless, at the end of the day Paul’s greater concern, as usual, is for the community as a whole and their role as offering evidence of God’s rule on earth through their conduct in general and relationships as a community in particular.
1. The Issue Presented (3:6)
In many ways this opening presentation of the issue comes in the strongest language in the entire passage, indeed in the entire letter. It is understandably addressed to the community as a whole, since that is the case with the letter as a whole, and there would be very little purpose in addressing the slackers themselves in any case. Nonetheless, if they should happen to be present when this letter is read to the whole community, they are about to get an earful.
6 Paul begins with one of the strongest adjurations to be found in his letters, “we command988 you in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ,” which is softened only by the appearance of the seventh (and final) vocative (“brothers and sisters”) in the letter. Although two significant manuscripts omit Paul’s “our” when referring to the Lord (see n. 53), by all reasonable criteria the pronoun is best understood as coming from Paul himself, not as an insertion by (many) later scribes. The reason for this singular “addition” to Paul’s otherwise common way of speaking about Christ is most likely an intentional emphasis on Christ’s lordship as the reality that all of them have in common.
He is “our” common Lord, and therefore what Paul is about to command them is predicated on that lordship.
The appearance of the vocative at this point is most likely aimed not at the slackers, although they too would be included, but at the rest of the believing community, who are addressed throughout. By anyone’s reckoning, the command itself is especially unusual for Paul and thus quite unexpected. His aim, as in his earlier dealing with this issue, is ultimately the well-being of the entire community. But his means of getting there is what catches our attention. Eventually he will put it plainly to the disruptive-idle themselves; they are to get to work so as to “earn the bread they eat” (v. 12).
But to get there Paul tells the entire community that they are to shun989 “every believer [Gk. adelphos, ‘brother’]990 who is idle and disruptive,” people who apparently have paid no attention to the words of correction in the first letter (1 Thess 4:9-12). The basic reason for the “shunning” given here is related to the fact that they have disregarded Paul’s former exhortation. To make this point he refers to them as “walking991 in an idle and disruptive way”; by so doing, they are not “walking according to the ‘traditions’ which they received from us.” The fact that there is more than one who is living ataktōs becomes clear at this point by way of a subtle grammatical reality. The shunning is in regard to “every brother” who is living this way; in giving the reason for it Paul picks up language from 2:15, where the community as a whole had been commended for “keeping the traditions.” Here the disruptive-idle are to be censured because they are not living in keeping with “the traditions” that the community had “received from us.”992
This final verb, “they993 received,” puts the emphasis on the fact that as part of the believing community “they themselves” were party to these instructions not only when Paul himself was present with them, but also in his earlier letter. He had passed on to them “the traditions,” to be sure. But here the emphasis is on their end. Not only had Paul passed on the teaching that was common to the early Christian community, but in this case he reminds the whole community that the disruptive-idle themselves had also “received” this teaching. So the community should expect no surprises, nothing new, in what follows; rather, he is about recall for all of them, but especially for the disruptive-idle, what was taught both by word and example. And the primary emphasis now lies with the latter, the example they had seen in his working with his own hands, even though as their teacher (a) he could have expected financial support from them, and (b) such working with his own hands might well have lowered his stature among some of them.
2. First Word for the Disruptive-Idle: Imitate Paul (3:7-10)
7 For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day,994 laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. 9 We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. 10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “Anyone who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
With this explanation Paul is basically spelling out “the traditions” that had been “handed down to them.” At the same time, in his second use in the letter of the language of “tradition” (v. 6) the word takes a second form. In its first occurrence in 2:15 Paul mentions “the traditions you were taught,” referring to verbal teaching. In the introduction to this section (v. 6 above), he refers to “the tradition they received from us.” And although verbal communication undoubtedly accompanied Paul’s choice to continue in the workplace while he was among them, his point here has altogether to do with what they should have learned from his example.
It should be further noted that at the heart of this passage (v. 8) Paul picks up language that he had used in the earlier letter (1 Thess 2:9), but here with a significant difference as to his reason for choosing to work. In the first letter he was defending his “right” to work with his own hands, apparently because some in the believing community had taken some excep-tion to his “working” and thus not accepting “support” from them. Here the same reality (his working to support himself and his companions) is being used to offer a model for the disruptive-idle to emulate. When looked at together, these two passages (from both letters) indicate that from the beginning of his time in Thessalonica Paul sensed that “work” was an issue for some of them. So now he must address the present situation in a more thoroughgoing way.995
7a Paul begins his correction with an explanatory “for,” indicating that what follows will be an elaboration of the final point in the preceding sentence, “which they (= the disruptive-idle as part of the believing community) had received from us.” But now he returns to the second person plural, accompanied by an emphatic “yourselves.”996 Thus Paul once more reminds the community, and especially the disruptive-idle, that this is something they “know.” No surprises here, because Paul had spoken to it on two other occasions: when he was with them, and in his former letter (1 Thess 4:11-12). So there can be no excuses for the disruptive-idle to continue in their unacceptable patterns of behavior.
But the object of the verb “you (yourselves) know” comes as something of a surprise, since it has little to do with the content of what was taught and everything to do with Paul himself as an exemplary paradigm in this matter. Thus what they “know” is not in this case the kind of (doctrinal) teaching to which he refers in 2:15 (“the traditions you were taught”); rather, he is referring to his former instruction regarding how God’s newly formed people live in community and in the world. At this point, therefore, Paul the follower of Christ is at the same time Paul the Jew, who was raised in a context where “tradition” was not simply doctrinal/theological “teaching” that was handed down, but (especially) teaching that had to do with how God’s people live in the world.997 That this is the case in the present context is made certain by his description that follows as to what was included in such instruction.998 It had altogether to do with what is proper behavior for God’s redeemed people.
7b-8 This clause begins with the Greek word hoti, which here can be introducing either a “causal” clause (= “because”), thus giving the reason for his conduct, or an “object” clause (= “that”), thus giving the content of his conduct as an exemplary paradigm. The TNIV in this case (almost certainly correctly so) has chosen the latter, bringing the former clause to a conclusion and beginning a new sentence with what amounts to the “content” of his former teaching. The teaching in this case is not a matter of “do as I say,” but “do as I did”; and what he did tells the whole story in terms of the current difficulty among the believers in Thessalonica.
First (v. 7b), and putting it negatively, he reminds them that “we were not ‘disorderly’ when we were with you.” Here is the sentence that has probably caused so many scholars and translators to lean toward “idle” for this Greek word, since what follows is an explanation as to how this was not so in his case; and on the surface one may argue so with some validity. But to do so is at the same time to neglect altogether the primary meaning of this Greek word (“out of order”). So what appears to have happened is the kind of thing one finds in the TNIV.
On the one hand, Paul’s concern is with the people themselves who are “disorderly” in the sense of both “idle and (thereby) disruptive.” On the other hand, Paul’s primary concern appears at the end of our verse 8 (“not to be a burden to any of you”). So he concludes the present clause by reminding them that neither did he “eat the bread of anyone without paying for it.” For most people in the contemporary Western world, this sounds so ordinary that it simply fails to catch our attention. But one needs to consider what this would have meant for him and them. Even though we do not know how long Paul and his companions were in Thessalonica, he had established a regular pattern of “working with his own hands,” which became a kind of “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” issue in his case. As the disavowal in the first letter indicates (1 Thess 2:8-9), he had worked with his own hands at great personal cost so as “not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.” But at the same time this eliminated their being able to minister to him in a financial way. That earlier choice now fortunately benefits his present argument. His example of “working” so as not to burden anyone is precisely the model he can thus set before the disruptive-idle.
In the process of making this point Paul repeats nearly verbatim language used in the earlier letter.999 As before, his reminder has three elements to it. First, we “worked night and day,”1000 which is a way of saying that he was constantly having to work with his own hands. Second, such “work” was for him a matter of “laboring and toiling,” which words together put emphasis on the work as labor in itself, which had a “toiling” dimension to it. In other words, he worked hard at his occupation, and on an ongoing basis. Third, the reason for doing so was a deliberate choice on his part, rather than necessity; and with this dimension we come to the real reason for his repeating himself on this matter. With what serves as an indirect word to the disruptive-idle Paul reminds them that he did this “so that we would not be a burden to any of you.” If one assumes, as one probably should, that the disruptive-idle would be present for the reading of the letter as a word from Paul to the church, this is thus aimed ultimately at them, but in an indirect way.
9 With this sentence Paul moves on to offer his explanation for the choice to work for his bread while in Thessalonica rather than to be dependent on any of them. The explanation comes in the form of a “not / but” clause, both sides of which are necessary explanations of the reminders regarding his “example” in the preceding sentences (vv. 7-8). The “not” clause is for Paul a significant (and necessary?) disclaimer having to do with his own “authority” as an apostle, a matter previously alluded to in the first letter (2:7). What Paul wants them to understand well at this point is that as an apostle of Christ he did in fact have the “right” to their support. Without that as the common assumption between him and them, the rest of the argument carries no weight.
But with that reminder in place he moves on to offer his primary reason for his choosing to “work with his hands” (1 Thess 4:11): “to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.” From our distance, of course, one cannot be sure whether this motive was present from the beginning by design, or whether what may have begun as a “need” on his part very soon evolved into a “model” for the believers in Thessalonica. In either case, from his present perspective the latter soon came to function as the primary reason for his “working with his hands” (1 Thess 4:11). Thus what from Paul’s present perspective was not born out of necessity in order to “eat and drink” came to be understood as having as a secondary value, thus allowing him to “offer ourselves [Paul and his companions] as a model for you to imitate.”
With this final clause, “so that you might imitate us,” Paul thus “encloses” the argument that began with the same language at the beginning of verse 7, as to what they “know.” What began as an expression of “ought to” with regard to “following Paul’s example” concludes with a purpose clause that uses the same language to make the same point. Given what he had said as to his purpose in “working night and day” in verse 8 (“so as not to be a burden to any of you”), one cannot at the end be altogether sure of his primary reason for “working night and day.” Most likely he understood the two reasons to be the two sides of the same coin. On the practical side of things, he worked “night and day” so as not to burden them; at the same time what was born of necessity came to be understood as offering them a model to imitate.
10 With his own model in hand, now understood as something for them to emulate, Paul concludes on a note that comes as something of a surprise to the later reader, but which reminds the Thessalonians of something that he “used to command”1001 them when present with them. The “command” is simple enough: “If anyone is unwilling to work, neither shall that person eat.”1002 The “surprise” element for the later reader is the fact that Paul had had to make such a ruling, apparently in an ongoing way, when he and his companions were present with them.
Although we have no hints in the text itself as to why this had been a matter of concern even from the beginning of his ministry there,1003 there can be little question that the issue is not a recent one, one that had come up after the apostolic trio had left Thessalonica. Both Paul’s opening clause (“when we were with you”) and his putting the verb in the imperfect (“we used to give you this command”) indicate that something was not quite right among them from the beginning. The people to whom this command was directed are those singled out in verse 6 as “walking [= living] in an idle and disruptive” way. The rest of the section (vv. 11-12) will go on to spell out the details of what Paul knows about the situation.
3. The Issue and Exhortation Repeated (3:11-12)
11 We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12 Such people we command and urge in1004 the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.
With what from our distance comes as a bit of a surprise, Paul now both repeats and summarizes what he has said to this point (from v. 6). But what began as an imperative to the whole community (to shun “every brother” who is walking in a disorderly manner, and thus not in keeping with the “traditions” they had received from him) is now directed explicitly toward the disruptive-idle themselves (though still by way of speaking to the community as a whole). Thus in two (Greek) sentences (vv. 11 and 12), Paul gathers together what has been said to this point and aims it directly at those needing correction. First (v. 11), he repeats the content of his opening sentence (v. 6), but now by way of a wordplay on the word “work”; second (v. 12), he speaks directly to the disruptive-idle, but in keeping with the whole passage does so in the third person rather than in the second. Thus the whole is directed toward the “some among you” who “are idle and disruptive”; and “such people” are now commanded directly to work with their own hands so as to “earn the bread they eat.”
11 Toward the end of what began as a simple command in verse 6, Paul now lets the whole community know what he has learned from a source not now known to us, but most likely from Timothy on his return from Thessalonica after having delivered the first letter. In any case Paul has no hesitation regarding the validity of what he has “heard.” The problem from an earlier time (noted in 1 Thess 4:10b-12) still persists; and the community is now being pressed hard to do something about it. So Paul’s way of approaching the double command that follows in verse 12 is to spell out precisely what he has learned.
In so doing Paul begins by repeating the language he had used when entering into this issue in our verse 6, except that what in that first instance was a distributive singular (“every brother”) is now expressed in the plural (“some among you”). This is the sure giveaway that in both letters Paul has been concerned with more than just one person who is living in a way that is “idle and disruptive” (for the meaning of which see v. 6 above). This plural further explains why in this second instance he is willing to give so much time to this matter, and to do so at the end of the letter as a way of emphasizing its importance.
But now with a considerable play on words Paul spells out how it is that they are not simply being “idlers,” as historically they have been designated, but are disturbing the shalom of the community as a whole. Although wordplays are usually next to impossible to translate effectively from one language into another, the TNIV translators have chosen in this case to do that very thing, and at little or no expense to greater precision in English. Paul’s problem is that these people are not simply not “working” (ergazomenoi); they are “meddling” (periergazomenoi = “working intrusively”), a wordplay that everyone in the Thessalonian community would have captured immediately, and which is also nicely caught by the TNIV’s “not busy but busybodies.” Since this is obviously deliberate on Paul’s part, one can be sure that if straight talk itself will not get his point across, this bit of play on words should catch everyone’s attention — especially those who are “guilty” regarding this matter.
12 The “indirection” of these imperatives is now continued by the “such people” with which this sentence begins (nicely kept in the TNIV). At the same time the “indirection” also gives way to straightforward imperative, in this case emphasized by way of synonymous imperatives now addressed directly to the disruptive-idle themselves. Thus “we command”1005 and “urge”1006 such people. Not only so, but further to reinforce the emphatic imperatives, Paul in this case, as at the beginning of this section (v. 6), adds the basis on which the command is made; it is “in the Lord Jesus Christ,” the eighth of nine occurrences of the full “name” in this letter.1007
The content of the command itself picks up the language put negatively in verse 10 and now applies it in a positive way to the unruly-idle. A part of Paul’s emphasis can be seen in the word order itself (lit. “in order that in ‘quietness’ working, their own bread they might eat”). The emphasis here lies with their living or being “in a state of quietness without disturbance” (so BDAG). As before, this does not to have do with being “silent” as such, but, as the TNIV nicely put it, with their “settling down” so that (again literally) “their own bread they might eat.”1008 The clear implication of the combination of the phrase “in quietness” with the emphatic reflexive pronoun “their own” is that “quietness” has to do with not disturbing the shalom of the community by “sponging” off other believers; and further included is the implication that they have chosen not to work with their own hands. Thus they are not among those to whom life has dealt a hard blow, as it were. They rather have deliberately chosen not to work, and thus to live off the largesse of others; and whether the “others” in this case are “well to do” or not is neither suggested nor implied in the text as such, although in the nature of things in first-century Greco-Roman culture the wealthy would be the more likely primary targets of their indolence.
One should probably use divinely inspired caution when thinking about how a text like this applies in the kind of multicultural world in which most of the users of this commentary will have been raised, particularly because the word “work” has taken on a considerably different meaning from the world in which I was raised. “Work” had to do with manual labor, and the more difficult or intense it was the more truly it was understood as “work.” In an earlier day it would have been unthinkable that my sitting at a computer writing this commentary would constitute work as much as that of the farmer or builder or “laborer” of any kind. Indeed, they had Paul’s own example (“laboring and toiling” at his occupation) as biblical “proof” for such a view. But Paul’s concern in this passage, as in its earlier expression in 1 Thessalonians 4:9-11, has to do with the “disruptive” nature of those who have chosen to go this route — which only adds to the travesty of having translated Paul’s Greek word ataktōs with the English word “idle.” It is not “idleness” per se that concerns Paul, but the unruly nature of their refusal to work and thus disrupting the shalom of the entire community that concerns him. Against that kind of “idleness” there should be much legitimate concern in any community of faith.