The apparent meaning of the sentence is difficult to understand. Wrath seems most naturally to refer to God’s judgment at the end time, as it does elsewhere in this letter (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 1 Thessalonians 5:9); yet Paul uses the past tense, “has come,” and the final phrase at last
seems to confirm the idea that this wrath has already come. If this interpretation of the grammar of verse 16c is correct, it is necessary to ask in what sense God’s wrath had already come. Interpreters of 1 Thessalonians have scoured history looking for a suitable event which could be understood as a suitably severe expression of God’s wrath upon the Jews. The most obvious event from the first century would be the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but that was two decades after the writing of this letter. And there is no other known event which can convincingly be described as the outpouring of God’s wrath in the sense Paul speaks of it here. We must therefore accept that our present historical knowledge does not allow us to reach any meaningful conclusion on the exact manner in which the wrath of God has come upon them at last. It is likely, however, that Paul had in mind some event or events which could be described in this way.1,2 Furthermore, this experience of God’s wrath was a foretaste of the final and irreversible wrath that will come upon all the disobedient at the end of the age—just as the salvation which believers in Jesus experience in the present time is a foretaste of their perfect future salvation.3
16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!