Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
2 Thessalonians 1:3-12, Suffering now, and the Lord revealed in blazing fire
Paul thanks God for a church whose faith and love keep growing under persecution, and promises that God will repay their persecutors and give them relief when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his powerful angels in blazing fire.
2 Thessalonians 1:3-12, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul thanks God that the Thessalonians' faith and love keep growing while they suffer persecution. He tells them their endurance shows God's justice at work: God will repay those who trouble them and give them rest when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven with his angels. Those who reject God will be punished and banished from the Lord's presence, while Paul prays that God will make the believers worthy of their calling. What everlasting destruction means is debated.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/present-age-and-age-to-come\/","n":"This age and the age to come","s":"Jews divided history into the present age, under the rule of evil nations, and the age to come, when God would rule unchallenged. The sufferings expected before the change were called birth pangs.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/angels\/","n":"Angels","s":"God's messengers and his heavenly army. Jews of Jesus' day spoke of guardian angels, of the greatest angels standing before God's face, and of angels coming with God at the judgment.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/day-of-the-lord\/","n":"The day of the Lord","s":"The prophets spoke of a coming day when God would judge the world and rescue his people. Paul calls it the day of Christ, giving Jesus the place the prophets gave to God.","r":""}
More scholars doubt this letter than the first: critics point to its signs before the end, a lawless one found nowhere else in Paul, a colder tone and close imitation of 1 Thessalonians, and date it after Paul's death. Carson, Moo and Morris answer that apocalypses often join an imminent end with signs, that the first letter's warmth comes from its self-defense, and that 3:17 makes any other author a forger; with Keener, his notes, the ESV Study Bible, Wright and Bird and the Zondervan dictionary, they place it at Corinth a few months after the first letter, about AD 50 or 51, and they keep the traditional order of the two. God's reward for the righteous who suffer was a major Jewish theme, and most Jews expected intense suffering before the end of the age (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). The blazing fire recalls Isaiah 66:15 (Keener and his notes). The powerful angels are God's army, and Heiser reads them with Jude 14-15 as a returning army of divine beings and glorified people. Everlasting destruction in Jewish writings sometimes meant complete destruction, sometimes eternal suffering, and sometimes both in one passage (Keener and his notes).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 2 Thessalonians, Authorship, introduction to 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12, and on 2 Thessalonians 1:2, 1:4-5, 1:6-7 and 1:9
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Introduction to 2 Thessalonians, Authorship, and notes on 2 Thessalonians 1:5 and 1:7
- ESV Study Bible, Introduction to 2 Thessalonians, Author and Title
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 18, Authorship of 2 Thessalonians
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, ch. 41, The Mount of Assembly
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 14, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Author, Date and Relation Between 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Reversal of Order
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Thessalonians, Letters to the
