All editions of the Greek New Testament do not mark the division between verses 11 and 12 at the same point in the text. Some editions, followed by some versions (e.g. King James Version Revised Version Revised Standard Version New English Bible), include We encouraged you, we comforted you in verse 11. Good News Translation, here as elsewhere, follows the verse division of the UBS Greek New Testament.

Again, Paul appeals to what the Thessalonians themselves know. In verse 9 he has said that he did not want to be a burden to “any one” of them. Here, he reinforces this personal reference by the emphatic each one of you (New English Bible has “we dealt with you one by one”; Bijbel in Gewone Taal “each [one] personally”). Paul has already called his readers “brothers” and compared himself and his companions to a nursing mother (v. 7). Now he compares the Christian family relationship with the relationship between a father and his children. In verse 7 Paul was thinking of the intimacy of a shared life; here he chooses the relationship between a father and his children, because the teaching and preaching function of the evangelists is in focus. This sentence has no main verb in Greek. We treated is supplied by Good News Translation Translator’s New Testament (New English Bible “we dealt with”). In some languages it may be difficult to supply an appropriate corresponding expression. One may, in some cases, employ a phrase such as “you know that our relation to each one of was….” In other instances it may be necessary to use a more specific expression, for example, “you know that we helped each one of you just as a father helps his own children.”

Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1976. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .