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;
and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you: There are also idlers among them, "working not at all." These need to follow the example of Paul who "wrought with labour and travail night and day" (2 Thessalonians 3:8). "Paul gave a new dignity to manual labour by precept and example" (Robertson 30). The idleness may have stemmed in part from the expectation that the Lord’s return is imminent. "The expectation was right in so far as that the Church should be always looking for Him; but they were wrong in making it a ground for neglecting their daily work" (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown 389). "What Paul is condemning here is not unemployment as such (when people want work but cannot find it) but idleness (when work is available but people do not want it)" (Stott 90).