1 Thessalonians 2:18

_ _ Wherefore — The oldest manuscripts read, “Because,” or “Inasmuch as.”

_ _ we would — Greek, “we wished to come”; we intended to come.

_ _ even I Paul — My fellow missionaries as well as myself wished to come; I can answer for myself that I intended it more than once. His slightly distinguishing himself here from his fellow missionaries, whom throughout this Epistle he associates with himself in the plural, accords with the fact that Silvanus and Timothy stayed at Berea when Paul went on to Athens; where subsequently Timothy joined him, and was thence sent by Paul alone to Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:1).

_ _ Satan hindered us — On a different occasion “the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Jesus” (so the oldest manuscripts read), Acts 16:6, Acts 16:7, forbad or hindered them in a missionary design; here it is Satan, acting perhaps by wicked men, some of whom had already driven him out of Thessalonica (Acts 17:13, Acts 17:14; compare John 13:27), or else by some more direct “messenger of Satan — a thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7; compare 2 Corinthians 11:14). In any event, the Holy Ghost and the providence of God overruled Satan’s opposition to further His own purpose. We cannot, in each case, define whence hindrances in good undertakings arise; Paul in this case, by inspiration, was enabled to say; the hindrance was from Satan. Grotius thinks Satan’s mode of hindering Paul’s journey to Thessalonica was by instigating the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers to cavil, which entailed on Paul the necessity of replying, and so detained him; but he seems to have left Athens leisurely (Acts 17:33, Acts 17:34; Acts 18:1). The Greek for “hindered” is literally, “to cut a trench between one’s self and an advancing foe, to prevent his progress”; so Satan opposing the progress of the missionaries.