This verse restates in more detail what Paul has said in verse 7 about his own and his companions’ example. As often in Paul’s writings (e.g. 1 Thess. 1.5, 8), this verse consists of a negative statement followed by a positive one, and the two are contrasted by a strong “but.” Good News Translation brings out the contrast by beginning a new sentence with instead. Conversely, we worked and toiled and we kept working day and night (literally “but in work and toil night and day we worked”) should be taken closely together.
We did not accept anyone’s support without paying for it is literally “nor did we eat bread from anyone for nothing.” “Bread” is a common Hebrew idiom for food of any kind (cf. Jerusalem Bible “have our meals at anyone’s table,” Translator’s New Testament “we paid for all the food we were given”). Some translations, like Good News Translation, are even wider; New English Bible has “board and lodging,” and Barclay “maintenance.” There is a slight contradiction in meaning between accept … support and without paying for it, since to accept someone’s support implies becoming someone’s debtor. In translation into other languages, it is best to make it clear that Paul did not accept any object (food, or at most board and lodging) without paying for it.
Without paying for it is essentially a negative condition meaning “unless we paid for it,” or “if we did not pay for it.” The combination of a negative statement, we did not accept anyone’s support, with the negative condition may prove misleading in some languages, and a shift to a completely positive statement may be necessary, for example, “we accepted help from people only if we paid for it,” or “we let people help us, but we always paid them for what they did.” A more specific reference to food might be introduced as “we paid for all the food we received from anyone.”
The contrast between the first and second parts of verse 8 may be introduced in a somewhat fuller manner by saying “Instead of receiving something for nothing, we worked and toiled….”
Worked and toiled in Greek are nouns indicating events, which Good News Translation and some other translations therefore render by verbs. The same nouns are used in 1 Thess. 2.9. We kept working day and night so as not to be an expense to any of you is identical in Greek with part of 1 Thess. 2.9, where Good News Bible had trouble for expense. The difference in translation can be attributed to the difference in contexts. Paul’s point in 1 Thess. 2 is “we came to you with pure motives, asking nothing for ourselves, but eager to share the Christian message with you.” In 2 Thess. 3 Paul is concerned, not only to defend the evangelists’ own behavior, but to offer it as an example to his readers. His main interest now is not their behavior in general, but the work they did. In other respects, the notes on 1 Thess. 2.9 apply to this verse also.
It may be impossible in some languages to find two verbs corresponding to worked and toiled. The two words found in the Greek text do not indicate different kinds of activity; they are used simply to emphasize that much labor was involved. Therefore one may say “we worked very hard indeed.”
A literal rendering of we kept working day and night can be misleading in some languages, since it might be understood to mean “all day and all night,” thus allowing no time for rest or anything else. It may therefore be necessary to use a more general statement such as “we are working almost all the time,” or “we hardly stopped working.”
The purpose clause so as not to be an expense to any of you may be expressed in some languages as a reason, for example, “because we did not want to be an expense to any of you,” or “because we did not want any of you to have to pay something to help us.”
Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1976. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .