You remember could, grammatically, mean “remember!” (cf. Translator’s New Testament), but Paul’s repeated use of the similar expression “as you know” makes this unlikely. Again we have the conjunction “for” (compare verses 1, 3, 5), indicating simply that Paul has not passed on to a completely different subject. Good News Translation rightly leaves this for the reader to infer, since it was more natural in ancient Greek than it is in current English to make explicit the relations between sentences. The translator will need to decide whether it is necessary to express in his languages the relation between this sentence and the preceding one. If it is necessary, he will also, of course, need to decide how it should be done.

Brothers does not here (see notes on 2.1) mark the beginning of a new section, but it is an intensification of emotive meaning. Worked and toiled are two close synonyms which are often used together (see 2 Thess. 3.8; 2 Corinthians 11.27). They both mean work which is “hard,” the first in the sense of tiring and the second in the sense of difficult. Paul used the first word in 1.3 in describing how the Thessalonians’ love made them work so hard. In some languages it may not be possible to distinguish between “work” and “toil,” but the terms can be combined in a single expression including an emphatic qualifier, for example, “we worked very, very hard” or “we worked so very much.”

Day and night is literally “night and day.” The word order does not come from the Jewish method of counting nightfall as the beginning of the day; it was normal Greek usage too. The order should be modified, if necessary, to conform with what is more natural in the receptor language (as in Good News Translation Phillips Biblia Dios Habla Hoy Bible en français courant New American Bible Bijbel in Gewone Taal).

Be any trouble comes from the same root as made demands in verse 7. Here the context shows clearly that Paul is thinking of the financial burden which would have been thrown on the Thessalonians if he had not earned his own living. Paul implies that Silas and Timothy also worked. In a Jewish setting, there would have been nothing unusual about this, since every rabbi had a trade. In Thessalonica it would have been more remarkable, since non-Jewish traveling lecturers were often less scrupulous, and the Greek generally despised manual labor. The Greek means literally “lay a burden on any one of you” (cf. Phillips “be a burden to any of you” and Translator’s New Testament).

So that we would not be any trouble to you may be translated in some languages as a direct reference to financial costs, for example, “so that our being with you would not cost you anything,” or “so that you would not have to pay anything for our being with you.”

Preached translates a common secular word used of an official herald making a public proclamation. It is used throughout the New Testament to refer to the communication of the Christian message. In current English, preached (unless otherwise specified in a phrase like “open-air preaching”) tends to refer to a part of formal worship in a church building. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy and Bible en français courant have “announced”; New English Bible uses the more literary word “proclaimed.” The important component to introduce in a verb designed to translate preached is the urgency with which the proclamation is made. In some languages the most appropriate equivalent is “we spoke earnestly to you about the Good News from God,” or “we spoke urgently to you about the Good News we received from God.”

Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1976. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .