And that we may be delivered. — Compare Romans 15:31. This clause is an amplification of the word “may run along:” the impediments to the gospel progress were (except that all were overruled for good) such persecutions as these. St. Paul gives thanks for such deliverances in 2 Corinthians 1:10; 2 Timothy 3:11; 2 Timothy 4:17. Perhaps (as St. Chrysostom suggests) one reason for here inviting their prayers for himself was to nerve the Thessalonians by the sense that they were not the only people in the world in danger.
From unreasonable and wicked men. — The curious word rendered “unreasonable” is rendered “amiss” in Luke 23:41, “wickedness” in Acts 25:5, “harm” in Acts 28:6, occurring nowhere else in the New Testament. It properly means something “misplaced” hence “extravagant,” “monstrous.” Thus the dying robber says that our Lord had done “nothing so monstrous” as to deserve crucifixion; Festus ironically invites the priests to a serious journey to St. Paul’s trial, “if there be something so monstrous in him;” the Maltese barbarians “saw that nothing so monstrous happened to him after all.” So St. Paul wishes the Thessalonians to pray for his deliverance “from these monstrous and depraved people.” He is evidently meaning some particular foes whom he fears, for the original has the definite article. Who, then, are “these monstrous persons?” If we turn to Acts 18:6; Acts 18:9; Acts 18:12, and observe the circumstances in which the letter was written, we can hardly doubt that they are the unbelieving Jews of Corinth. From these Jews he was, though narrowly, delivered. It was, perhaps, in direct answer to the prayers for which St. Paul here asks that he received the vision and assurances of our Lord, and that Gallio was moved to quash so abruptly the proceedings of the Jews.
For all men have not faith. — This clause gives the reason for the alarm implied in the last clause: “Do not be surprised at my needing help against bad men; for you know that it is not every one that believes.” There is something a little scornful and embittered in the expression (recalling the invective against the same people in 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16), for it suggests the thought that nothing better was to be expected from such a set of unconverted Jews. Tacitly, also, the unbelieving Corinthians are contrasted with the Thessalonians who had so readily embraced the truth. It may, however, be doubted whether this sentence is not an instance of a common Hebrew idiom, occurring more than twenty times in the Greek Testament, by which the combination of “all” and “not” amounts to “not any.” Thus, “all flesh shall not be justified,” in Romans 3:20, is rendered “no flesh shall be justified;” “they are not all of us,” in 1 John 2:19, means “not one of them is of us.” So here it may be, “for there is not one of them that believes;” and so also, again speaking of the Jews, in Romans 10:16, “they did not all obey” may mean “none of them obeyed” — a rhetorical exaggeration, which the writer proceeds to justify by the exhaustive question from Isaiah.