Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Titus · About this commentary
The Training of the Young Wives
Titus 2:4-5
4 that they may train the young wives to love their husbands, to love their children, · WEB
The older women are given a curriculum, and the reason offered is missionary: a household that contradicts the message discredits it.
The teaching assigned in verse 3 has a syllabus in verses 4 and 5. The older women are to train the young wives — the verb means to bring someone to their senses, formed on the sober-minded word this chapter presses on everyone — to love their husbands and their children, to be sober-minded and chaste, workers at home, kind, and in subjection to their own husbands. Instruction passes woman to woman, inside the household rather than from the assembly's platform.
The closing clause carries the weight: that God's word may not be blasphemed. That is the reason given, and it is not the pragmatism it might look like. In a society that judged a religion by the households it produced, a home visibly at odds with the message was an argument against it. The same motive governs the next group and the one after, and by the third repetition it is plain that the whole household code is aimed outward.
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