2 Thessalonians 3:8

(8) Neither.—They might have thought it possible to live on others without incurring so serious a charge as “disorderliness.”

Eat any man’s bread.—Still more literally, eat bread from any man—i.e., “from any man’s table.” St. Paul always becomes picturesque and vivid in a passage of this kind, and generally Hebraistic (“eat bread,” 2 Samuel 9:7, and often). “For nought” is literally at a gift. There is a flavour of scorn in St. Paul’s disclaimer of such a parasite’s life.

Wrought.—In the original it is the participle, “working,” which better suits the rapid flow of the sentences. The order also is slightly more forcible: “We ate bread from no man’s table at a gift, but in toil and travail, all night and day labouring that we,” &c. To “be chargeable” means more than “to make you pay”: it contains the notion of burdensome expense.