Why would the apostle Paul omit a word from an Old Testament text in a quotation? In 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Paul quotes from the triple refrain from Isaiah 2:10, 19, and 21, but his quote does not match the extant text of Isaiah. Paul omits the word “fear” (MT: פַּחַד; LXX: φόβος). Scholars have offered two solutions for the last 50+ years: (1) Paul adjusted the text of Isaiah because he has changed the meaning of Isa 2:10, 19, 21; (2) Paul adjusted the text of Isaiah to create better parallelism in the quoted verse. Neither of these proposed solutions considers the literary contexts or syntax of the passages at hand thoroughly enough. In this paper I will argue that Paul preserves the original meaning and syntax of the Isaiah text by fronting the language of “destruction” and omitting “fear” in 2 Thess 1:9. This research intersects Greek syntax, Septuagint studies, and Paul’s use of the Old Testament. This paper will contribute to research on verbal omissions in quotations, which remains a gap in the field of scriptural use of scripture.