The Household's Care Requires Both Generosity and Discernment

“Rebuke” is epiplesso, to strike at or lash out, found only here: not a ban on correcting an older man, but on hammering him. “Elder” here is presbyteros in its plain sense, an older man, as the list of ages shows; in verse 17 the same word means an officer of the church.

Paul practised what he tells Timothy. In Romans 16:13 he greets Rufus “and his mother and mine”, an older woman in the church who had mothered him. Four groups, four family names, and the relationship decides the tone before any correction is given.

Care for widows runs through the law and the prophets; Psalm 68:5 calls God “a judge of the widows”. The first recorded dispute in the church was over the daily distribution to widows in Jerusalem (Acts 6:1). “Honour” is timao, from the word for price or value.

“Shew piety” is eusebeo, a verb of religious devotion, used here of looking after parents at home: the care is itself counted as worship. “Requite” is literally “give back returns”, repaying what was received in childhood. Jesus condemned the Corban vow for letting a son dodge exactly this duty (Mark 7:10-13).

“Desolate” is a perfect participle, a woman who has been left entirely alone. “Trusteth” is also perfect: she has set her hope on God and keeps it there. Luke’s Anna is the picture, a widow who “served God with fastings and prayers night and day” (Luke 2:37).

“Liveth in pleasure” is spatalao, to live in soft luxury, the verb James 5:5 uses of the rich: “Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton.” The paradox of death inside life matches the rebuke to Sardis in Revelation 3:1, “thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”

“Blameless” is again the word from 3:2, not to be taken hold of. The “they” is left open in Greek: the widows, their families, or both. The instructions are to be given out publicly so that the whole arrangement stands clear of any criticism.

“Infidel” in 1611 simply meant one without the faith, the Greek apistos, unbeliever. Greek and Roman society already expected children to support aged parents, and Athenian law punished sons who did not, so a believer who neglected it fell below his pagan neighbours. “His own” is the wider kin; “his own house” the immediate family.

“Taken into the number” is katalego, to enrol on a list, the word for enlisting soldiers, used only here. Sixty was the threshold of old age; Leviticus 27:7 sets a lower valuation for persons “from sixty years old and above”. “Wife of one man” is the overseer’s qualification of 3:2 turned round.

Five qualifications, each introduced by “if”. Foot washing was a slave’s task, and Jesus had said “ye also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14). “Lodged strangers” is one word, xenodocheo, found only here. “Relieved” is eparkeo, the verb that returns in verse 16 for what families and the church are to do.

“Wax wanton” is katastreniao, found only here, built on a root for restless, insolent desire; Revelation 18:7 uses the simpler form of Babylon, which “lived deliciously”. “Refuse” is paraiteomai, to decline, here to decline to enrol, not to refuse all help.

“Cast off” is atheteo, to set aside or annul, the word Galatians 3:15 uses of breaking a covenant: “no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.” That legal colour is one reason many think a pledge made at enrolment is meant. “Damnation” is krima, judgment, a sense narrower than the modern ear hears.

“Tattlers” is phlyaroi, babblers of nonsense, found only here; the verb appears in 3 John 10, “prating against us with malicious words”. “Busybodies” is periergoi, from the same root as the busybodies of 2 Thessalonians 3:11, who were also idle. Idleness and meddling come as a pair in both letters.

“Guide the house” is oikodespoteo, to be the master of a household, a strong word found only here: the younger wife is given real authority over the home. “The adversary” may be a human opponent looking for a scandal, or Satan, who is named in the very next verse.

“Turned aside” is ektrepo, the verb of 1:6, where some “turned aside unto vain jangling”. The word “already” turns the warning of verses 11 to 13 from a possibility into a report: it has happened in Ephesus.

The oldest manuscripts read only “if any woman that believeth”, piste, a believing woman with widows in her household, perhaps a well-off woman with widowed relatives or dependants. The King James follows later copies that add “man or”. “Charged” is bareo, weighed down, the church burdened beyond its means.

“Rule well” uses the verb of 3:4-5, standing at the head of a household. “Labour” is kopiao, to toil until tired. One proposed background for “double” is the firstborn’s “double portion” in Deuteronomy 21:17; another takes it as respect and payment together. The text does not decide between them.

“The scripture saith” introduces both lines, which would set a saying known from Luke’s Gospel beside the law of Moses, though some think “scripture” governs only the first. Oxen were driven round the threshing floor over the sheaves, and Paul had used the same verse in 1 Corinthians 9:9: “Doth God take care for oxen?”

The rule is Deuteronomy 19:15, “at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established”, which Jesus applies in Matthew 18:16 and Paul in 2 Corinthians 13:1. Every Israelite had that protection; an elder is not to lose it because his position makes him a target.

“Them that sin” is a present participle, those who persist in it. “Before all” may mean the whole congregation or the rest of the elders; “others” is hoi loipoi, “the rest”, which some take as the remaining elders who will learn from it. Either way the correction is not handled in a corner.

“Preferring one before another” is prokrima, prejudgment, deciding a case before it is heard, and “partiality” is prosklisis, leaning toward one side; neither word occurs anywhere else in the New Testament. The elect angels appear as witnesses to the charge, as Paul elsewhere calls the apostles “a spectacle” to angels (1 Corinthians 4:9).

“Suddenly” is tacheos, quickly, before there has been time for the evidence of verses 24 and 25. “Be partaker” is koinoneo, the verb of fellowship, sharing: endorsing a man means holding a share in what he does. “Pure” is hagnos, from the root of the “purity” of 4:12 and 5:2.

“Drink no longer water” is one word, hydropoteo, to be a water-drinker, found only here, which suggests Timothy had chosen to abstain. Ancient medical writers recommended wine for digestion, and water in cities was often unsafe. Coming after the ascetics of 4:3, the advice keeps his purity from being mistaken for their rules.

The image is of a procession to court. Some men’s sins run ahead of them to the judgment like heralds, so everyone knows before they arrive; other men’s sins trail behind and show up later. “Judgment” may be Timothy’s assessment of a candidate or God’s final verdict, and both readings have support.

“Can not be hid” echoes Matthew 5:14, “A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.” The good works that are not yet visible will come out as surely as the hidden sins. The verse completes a pair with verse 24, the one balancing the other in form.