<p>3:10 <i>For even when we were with you, this we commanded you: If any will not work, neither let him eat of your food</i>- Paul's example, as noted on :8 and 1 Thess. 2:9, was absolutely congruent with his commandment to them. He was the word made flesh in this sense. It is clear from 1 Thess. 4 that there were gaping holes in their theological knowledge, given the brief time Paul was with them; but his focus was more on the practical issues which are very much the Gospel as preached by the Lord Jesus in the gospel records.</p><p>But what may lie behind Paul's tough line against those who refuse to accept that &quot;if any will not work, neither shall he eat&quot; (3:10)? &quot;If any will not work, neither shall he eat&quot; is a quotation from a Jewish Targum paraphrase on the curse upon Adam in Eden; especially the <i>Targum Pseudo-Jonathan</i> on Gen. 3:19. The language of Gen. 3:17-19 about working and eating bread is alluded to several times in 2 Thess. 3:6-12. When Paul speaks of how he &quot;worked in toil and hardship&quot; because he couldn't eat others' bread for nothing (3:8), he clearly has in mind the curse upon Adam. Paul's comment that such persons shouldn't be 'given anything to eat' in 3:10 would then be an allusion to how the serpent gave food to Eve, and she then gave the food to Adam. And the serpent is set up as typical of the Judaizing element that sought to destroy the church (2 Cor. 11:3; Rom. 16:20). Genesis 3 is arguably the most used and yet most misunderstood chapter in the Bible, and thus it has ever been. So many of the false teachings circulating in first century Judaism involved misinterpretations of this chapter.</p><p>My suggestion would therefore be that there was a teaching going around that actually we are no longer under the effects of the curse in Eden. We don't need to work, we bear no responsibility for our sins nor do we suffer from the effects of Adam's sin. And they believed this to the point that they expected more wealthy Christians to as it were fund their belief by providing for them materially. Now this all involves something far more than the laziness and occasional irresponsibility which at times we all struggle with. They were &quot;disorderly&quot;, <i>ataktos</i>, not in &quot;order&quot;. The word is used in a military context for soldiers falling out of line in marching. By claiming to be more than human, these people were unacceptive of their humanity, their place in the ranks of the rest of humanity. Interestingly, <i>ataktos</i> is derived from the Greek verb <i>tassein</i>, &quot;to order&quot;, and this verb is several times used by the Septuagint in the context of the &quot;order&quot; decreed by God at the beginning (Lev. 18:4; Dt. 27:1; Job 38:12); it's also used in Jewish writings about the &quot;order&quot; established by God at the time of Adam's sin (M.J.J. Menken, <i>2 Thessalonians</i> (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 131 provides examples). Sirach 7:15 speaks of how Adam's sin led to &quot;toilsome labour and agriculture, <i>ordered</i> by the Most High&quot;. The <i>dis</i>orderly walk of some in Thessalonica was therefore in refusing to accept their own humanity and the consequences of being human; in this sense they were <i>dis</i>orderly in that they refused to accept that we must work if we are to eat, and sought to get around it, with the implication being that they had not sinned and didn't deserve to suffer under such a curse. And hence they walked around as walkers around up to no good &quot;which walk... as busybodies&quot; disguises a play on words in the Greek original. This walking around up to no good sounds very much like the serpent in Eden; and Paul elsewhere fears lest the churches, whom he likens to innocent Eve in Eden, should be misled by such serpents (2 Cor. 11:3). And other New Testament letters suggest that misinterpretations of Eden were being used in the early churches to justify various moral, especially sexual, misbehaviours. All this leads to the same conclusion as noted on :14; that these who would not work were in fact Judaizing false teachers.</p>