And because he was of the same craft, Art, occupation, or trade:he abode with them; in the same house in which they were:and wrought; with his own hands, to support himself, for he was a stranger in this place; and as yet here was no church to minister to him; and when there was, he would take nothing of them, that the false teachers, who rose up among them, might not make any handle of it against him, and to the prejudice of the Gospel; though otherwise he thought it his just due to receive a maintenance from the churches; and insisted upon it as an ordination of Christ.
He learned a trade whilst among the Jews, with whom it was common for their greatest doctors to be brought up to some trade or another;See Gill on "Mr 6:3".for by their occupation they were tent makers; either for the soldiers, and which were made of sack cloth of hair, or of leather, and of the skins of various animals , sewed together; hence the phrase, "sub pellibus", "under the skins", is used for to lie in tents : or those tents they made, were canopies made of linen, and other things, which were erected in the summer season to shade and screen from the heat of the sun; though others take them for a sort of tapestry, or hangings, which they made for theatres, palaces, and stately rooms; and according to the Syriac version, they were horses' trappings which they made: perhaps they were of the same occupation with Menedemus the philosopher, who was skhnorrafov, "a sewer of tents" .
Alex. ab Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 1. c. 12. Caesar. Comment. l. 5. de Bello Africano. p. 471. Liv. Hist. l. 5. in principio. Laert. Vit. Philosoph. l. 2. p.