1st Thessalonians Chapter 4 verse 11 Holy Bible
and that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your hands, even as we charged you;
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And that you may take pride in being quiet and doing your business, working with your hands as we gave you orders;
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and to seek earnestly to be quiet and mind your own affairs, and work with your [own] hands, even as we charged you,
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And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;
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read chapter 4 in WBT
and that you make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, even as we charged you;
read chapter 4 in WEB
and to study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we did command you,
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Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 11. - And that ye study; literally, that ye be ambitious. To be quiet; to avoid unrest, to live in peace. Worldly ambition excludes quietness and prompts to restlessness; so that the apostle's admonition really is, "that ye be ambitious not to be ambitious." The unrest which disturbed the peace of the Thessalonian Church was not political, but religions; it arose from the excitement naturally occasioned by the entrance of the new feeling of Christianity among them. It would also appear that they were excited by the idea of Christ's immediate advent. This had occasioned disorders, and had caused several to neglect their ordinary business and to give themselves over to an indolent inactivity, so that Christian prudence was overborne (comp. 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12). Perhaps, also, the liberality of the richer members of the Church was abused and perverted, so as to promote indolence. And to do your own business; to attend to the duties of your worldly calling, to avoid idleness. And to work with your own hands. From this it would appear that the members of the Thessalonian Church were chiefly composed of the laboring classes. As we commanded you. A precisely similar exhortation is given in the Epistle to the Ephesians: "Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good" (Ephesians 4:28).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(11)And that ye study to be quiet.--The word means more than "study;" "and that ye make it your ambition to keep quiet"--their ambition having formerly been to make a stir among the Churches. It is a strong use of the rhetorical figure called oxymoron, or combining words of contrary meaning in order to give force and point to the style. The warnings in this verse are not directed against defiance of the law of brotherly love, but against a thoroughly wrong mode of showing that love: the unquietness, meddlesomeness, desultoriness with which it was accompanied are not so much instances of unkindness to the brotherhood as scandals to the heathen. Hence the conjunction at the beginning of the verse has something of an adversative force: "We beg you to be even more abundantly liberal, and (yet) at the same time to agitate for perfect calmness about it." It is commonly supposed (but proof is impossible) that the unsettlement arose from belief in the nearness of the Advent.Do your own business.--Not merely was each individual to do his own work, but the whole Church was to refrain from interfering ostentatiously with other Churches. In all languages, "to mind one's own business" signifies rather the negative idea of ceasing to meddle than the positive idea of industry.Work with your own hands.--Apparently the Thessalonians had been so busy in organising away from home that they had had no time to see to their own industry, and so (see end of next verse) were beginning to fall into difficulties. The words "with your own hands" are supposed to indicate that most of the Thessalonian Christians were of the artisan class.
