Sound Teaching Is Measured by More Than Confident Speech

“By the commandment” is epitage, a royal order, where Paul’s other letters usually say “by the will of God”. “God our Saviour” is a title found almost only in 1 Timothy and Titus; in the cities of Asia, “saviour” was also a title given to emperors on coins and inscriptions.

“My own son” is gnesios, the word for a legitimate child, born in wedlock, as against one of doubtful birth. Timothy had a Greek father and a Jewish mother (Acts 16:1). Mercy is added between grace and peace, a greeting found in the letters to Timothy and in many copies of Titus, but in none of Paul’s earlier letters.

“Besought” is parakaleo, to urge or ask, the language of one colleague to another. “Teach no other doctrine” is one word, heterodidaskaleo, teaching differently, found only here and at 6:3. Acts 19:22 sends Timothy ahead into Macedonia, so this arrangement is usually placed after the close of the Acts record.

“Fables” is mythoi, from which myth comes. Irenaeus, quoting this verse in the preface to Against Heresies, applied the genealogies to Gnostic chains of spiritual beings; many modern readers look instead to Jewish expansions of Old Testament family lists, since Titus 1:14 speaks of “Jewish fables”. Many manuscripts read “God’s ordering” (oikonomia) where the King James has “edifying”.

“Commandment” is parangelia, the same word as “charge” in verse 3 and verse 18: the instruction Timothy is to give, not the law of Moses. “Unfeigned” is anypokritos, without play-acting; a hypokrites was an actor on the stage, and a faith without the mask is the point.

“Swerved” is astocheo, to miss the target, an archer’s word used only in the letters to Timothy (6:21, 2 Timothy 2:18). “Turned aside” is ektrepo, to go off course, which medical writers used of a dislocated joint. “Jangling” in 1611 meant noisy, idle chatter.

“Teachers of the law” is nomodidaskaloi, the title Luke 5:17 gives the “doctors of the law” and Acts 5:34 gives Gamaliel, Paul’s own teacher. “Affirm” is a strong verb, to insist with confidence, the same verb Titus 3:8 uses for what Titus himself is to affirm.

The Greek is a play on words: the law, nomos, is good if used nomimos, lawfully. It echoes Romans 7:12 and 7:16, “the law is holy”, “I consent unto the law that it is good”. The problem is the handler, not the tool.

The first three pairs describe offences against God; then the list turns to people, following the order of the Ten Commandments. “Murderers of fathers” is patraloiai, literally father-strikers, the fifth commandment at its most brutal; Exodus 21:15 made striking a parent a capital crime. “Manslayers” stands for the sixth.

The list continues down the second table of the Ten Commandments: adultery and sexual sin, then stealing, then false witness. Jewish teaching read the eighth commandment above all as a ban on kidnapping (Exodus 21:16). “Sound” is hygiaino, healthy, a medical image for teaching that is peculiar to these letters.

The Greek reads “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God”. “Blessed” here is makarios, used of God only here and in 6:15 in the whole New Testament; Greeks used it of the untroubled happiness of the gods. “Committed to my trust” means placed in his keeping as a deposit.

The thanks go to Christ Jesus rather than to God the Father, which is unusual for Paul. “Enabled” is endynamoo, the verb of Philippians 4:13, “Christ which strengtheneth me”. The order matters: Christ judged him faithful first, then set him in the ministry, diakonia, service.

“Injurious” is hybristes, a man of violent insolence who delights in humiliating others. Acts 26:11 has Paul admit that he “compelled them to blaspheme”. Numbers 15:22-31 separates sins done unwittingly, for which sacrifice was provided, from sins done “presumptuously”, and many see that distinction behind “ignorantly”.

“Was exceeding abundant” is hyperpleonazo, found only here in the New Testament, overflowing past the brim, like Romans 5:20, “grace did much more abound”. Faith and love are set exactly against the unbelief and violence of the verse before: each old thing has its replacement.

“This is a faithful saying” occurs five times, all in these letters to Timothy and Titus, and marks a saying already known in the churches. The Greek says “I am chief”, present tense, not “I was”. “Came into the world” is language otherwise at home in John’s Gospel (1:9, 3:17).

“First” is protos, the same word translated “chief” in verse 15: first among sinners, therefore first as the showcase. “Pattern” is hypotyposis, an outline or preliminary sketch that later work fills in, used again only at 2 Timothy 1:13.

“King eternal” is literally “King of the ages”, close to the Jewish blessing formula “King of the universe”. The oldest manuscripts read “the only God”, without “wise”, which later copyists probably brought in from Romans 16:27. Invisibility is also a title of God in Colossians 1:15.

“War a good warfare” repeats the root: campaign the good campaign. The prophecies are connected in 4:14 with “the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery”. “Son Timothy” returns to the tenderness of verse 2 before the hard names of verse 20.

“Made shipwreck” is a single verb, nauageo. The only other New Testament use is 2 Corinthians 11:25, where Paul says “thrice I suffered shipwreck”; the man who writes the image had been in the water. Faith here is the cargo, and conscience the hull.

Hymenaeus returns in 2 Timothy 2:17-18, teaching that the resurrection is already past. Alexander may be the coppersmith of 2 Timothy 4:14 or the Alexander of Acts 19:33 at Ephesus, but the name was common. “Learn” is paideuo, to train as a child is trained. The same handing over to Satan appears in 1 Corinthians 5:5.