But Satan hindered us.— When the Hebrews would express any thing remarkably great, they add the name of God to it; so they call great mountains, the mountains of God,—and the like: and thus, when they describe the most wicked men, they call them the ministers, servants, and children of Satan, and sometimes Satan himself; because they imitate and comply with the temptations of that wicked spirit who is at the head of all apostacy from God, and the most remarkable enemy in the universe to truth and goodness. The unbelieving Jews of Thessalonica, as the instruments of Satan, were the persons intended; and indeed the sense of their extreme malice seems to have dwelt strongly on the Apostle's mind during the writing of this whole Epistle.
Related Commentaries of 1 Thessalonians 2:18
1 Thessalonians 2:18
18 Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.