and that you make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, even as we charged you;
study to be quiet: It is paradoxical that Paul here urges us to study (strive eagerly) to be quiet (still). Many of us are good at engaging in restless activity. We are not so good at heeding the psalmist’s words: "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalms 46:10). This admonition may well have been aimed at those persons, who, like the Corinthians, are primarily interested in the exercise of showy gifts such as tongue-speaking, a practice that Paul finds it necessary to regulate (see 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14). They need to learn there is value in an unobtrusive performance of one’s assigned tasks and the use of one’s unique gifts, or as Phillips puts it in his translation of this verse, "Make it your ambition to have no ambition." Paul’s gentle admonition here apparently goes unheeded and has to be followed with a more forceful command in 2 Thessalonians 3:12.