1 Thessalonians 2:7-8 But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children:… Were the person here meant only the stranger to whom a feeble mother, or, when the mother is no more, the sad and stricken father, entrusts their little one, still the image would express the ideas of kindness and care. But the pronoun "her own" (ἐαυτῆς) clearly shows that the picture in the apostle's eye is that of the mother herself nursing her tender offspring. And oh! what a love is hers! — how deep, how mild, how strong, how practical! Who, from his observation of the world, and from his own experience — in other stages, haply, than that of infancy — does not associate with the name of mother the idea of a gentleness the gentlest that ever, in this low world, takes up its home in a human voice, a human hand, a human heart? And what "man of woman born" may not catch the meaning, and feel the force, of the prophet's words — "As one whom his mother comforteth"? (A. S. Patterson, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children:WEB: But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother cherishes her own children. |
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