Notes on Matthew 18:6:
millstone. A stone used for grinding grain, lit. “the millstone of an ass,” a stone so large it took a donkey to turn it. Gentiles used this form of execution, and therefore it was particularly repulsive to the Jews.
1 Thessalonians 2:15 notes:
who killed . . . the Lord Jesus. There is no question that the Jews were responsible for the death of their Messiah, though the Romans carried out the execution. It was the Jews who brought the case against Him and demanded His death (cf. ), just as they had killed the prophets (cf. Matt. 22:37; Mark 5:1-8; Acts 7:51, 52).
2:15, 16 contrary to all men. Just as it is God’s will that all people be saved (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9), so it was the will of the Jews that no one find salvation in Christ (v. 16). Paul at one time had embraced this blasphemy of trying to prevent gospel preaching (cf. 1 Tim. 1:12-17).
2:16 wrath has come upon them. God’s wrath (cf 1:10; 5:9) on the Jews who “pile up their sins to the maximum limit” (cf. Matt. 23:32; Rom. 2:5), thus filling up the cup of wrath, can be understood: (1) historically of the Babylonian exile (Ezek. 8-11); (2) prophetically of Jerusalem’s destruction in A.D. 70; (3) eschatologically of Christ’s Second Coming in judgment (Rev. 19); or (4) soteriologically in the sense that God’s promised eternal wrath for unbelievers is so certain that it is spoken of as having come already as does the apostle John (cf. John 3:18, 36). This context relates to the fourth option.