1 Timothy 5: Reading Verse 8 Back Through Verse 4

A few Sundays ago, at the end of a lesson on being a good provider, a man I like read 1 Timothy 5:8 off his phone and said that was the standard right there. Worse than an infidel. A couple of people nodded, the man in front of me studied his shoes, and I did the same thing with mine. Somebody asked who had the closing prayer.

I've been turning it over since, and my quarrel isn't with the verse. It's with the job the verse is being handed. In the lesson it was a sentence about earning enough. In the chapter it sits at the end of a long stretch about widows, and my reading, which others may not share, is that it belongs to that stretch.

Who is verse 8 talking about?

Paul opens with an instruction to honor widows who are widows indeed, and before he has said another word about them, verse 4 splits the group in two. That's easy to miss if you came in at verse 8.

But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God.

1 Timothy 5:4

The ones doing the acting here are the children and nephews. Not the church and not the widow. They're told to learn something, which is a different verb than I'd have picked, and what they learn is piety, and where they learn it is at home. Then "requite," which just means pay back. A widow with grown children is owed something and the family is the one holding the debt.

The other widow, the one with nobody, turns up in verse 5 and "trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day." A hard sentence about the one who lives for pleasure follows, then a line saying to put all this in charge so people are blameless. And then comes verse 8.

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

1 Timothy 5:8

Here's how I read it. Coming straight after verse 4, "his own" and "those of his own house" sound like the same people, the widowed mother or aunt in reach, and the man in verse 8 is the one leaving her to the congregation. Paul never says so. The verse doesn't mention widows at all. But verse 16 comes back to the same family duty and is plain about who carries it: "any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them." Man or woman, and the duty doesn't turn on who earns more.

That's an argument from the neighborhood of the verse, and the verse could be wider than my reading. I'd still say it covers a man who works a second job so the kids can eat, and I'd expect Paul to agree. What my reading adds is that "his own" probably includes the relative who produces nothing. A mother-in-law in the back bedroom isn't contributing to the grocery bill, and the verse, read this way, asks you to carry her anyway.

Why does the church step back in verse 16?

The chapter opens the topic with "widows indeed" in verse 3, has "a widow indeed" again in verse 5, and comes back to "widows indeed" in verse 16. The family duty is laid down in between, in verses 4 and 8, and the closing verse repeats it before handing the rest to the church.

If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged; that it may relieve them that are widows indeed.

1 Timothy 5:16

So the order runs family first and the church second, with the church's resources kept for the widow nobody else will look after. Paul gives no figures and no formula. Picture a ward passing the hat for a widow's rent while two married children forty minutes away were never asked. Paul would have saved the ward the scramble and the children the embarrassment.

What was a widow supposed to have done to be on the list?

Paul says not to take a widow "into the number" under sixty, and that she should have been the wife of one man. What the number was is argued over. Some read it as a register of widows who had a task in the congregation and others as a plain roll of those receiving help, and the verse doesn't decide.

The next verse is a list of things she has already done.

Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work.

1 Timothy 5:10

Count the "if she have" clauses and you get five, and they aren't all the same kind. The first four are specific and the fifth is a net thrown over everything left over. Raising children is on the list, which means a woman who spent forty years at a stove and a laundry line qualifies on the first line. I notice the feet-washing is on there too, and I can't think of a ward activity committee that would sign anyone up for it. Nothing in the verse measures what she lacks. It lists what she did, and to me that makes the church's help sound closer to paying back than handing out.

Then the stretch from verse 11 through 15, which I'd skip if I could. Paul says to refuse the younger widows, says they learn to be idle, "tattlers also and busybodies," and says in verse 15 that some "are already turned aside after Satan." Verse 12 uses the word "damnation" and I have no tidy account of it. Verse 14 gives the remedy he wants for the younger ones, that they marry, bear children and guide the house. He's describing particular women with particular habits, and I read it as a judgment on them and not as a ruling on every widow who comes after.

What does "double honour" cost?

The elders who rule well, says verse 17, are "counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine." Verse 18 backs it with two sayings that Paul introduces as scripture.

For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.

1 Timothy 5:18

The first is Deuteronomy 25:4, which in the King James reads "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." The second is the line Jesus gives the seventy in Luke 10:7, where it says the labourer is worthy of "his hire." Hire and reward are different words for the same saying. Stacked up like that, "honour" in verse 17 starts to sound like something you could put in an envelope. And it's a strange comparison to hand a room full of church leaders. Paul takes men who govern and teach and says, in effect, feed the ox.

Then he turns to the harder part of an elder's life, which is being accused. I wrote about Paul's list of what a bishop should be in 1 Timothy 3 a week ago Saturday, and verse 19 is another side of the same office. Don't receive an accusation against an elder "but before two or three witnesses." That's Deuteronomy 19:15 in different words, which asks for "the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three." Verse 20 says "them that sin" should be rebuked before all, so that others fear. It doesn't say elders there, and I wouldn't pin it on them. Paul then swears Timothy to all of it in verse 21, before God and the elect angels, with no partiality.

Back at the start, verse 1 is a separate instruction about tone. Timothy is told not to rebuke an elder but to entreat him as a father, and that word elder there most likely means an older man, not an office. Whether Paul meant the two passages to meet, I can't say.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does 1 Timothy 5:8 mean a man who loses his job has denied the faith?

No, and that's the reading I was arguing with at the top. As I read it, the verse is about someone who has a relative he can help, most likely a widow in his house, and refuses. A man out of work who's trying to get back to it isn't who Paul is describing.

Who are the "widows indeed"?

The ones with nobody to turn to. A widow with children or nephews gets a different first step in verse 4, while the real widow is called desolate and praying night and day in verse 5, and the church's help in verse 16 is kept for her.

Does verse 23 let me drink wine?

Not from me. It's a line in a letter to Timothy about his stomach and his frequent illnesses, and the same sentence tells him to stop drinking only water. The aside is about him, and I'd leave it there.

Is Paul telling every young widow to remarry?

No. He's answering the women he just described, the idle ones going from house to house, and for them he says in verse 14 that the younger women should marry, bear children and guide the house. I don't take it as a rule for all widows.

Verses 22 through 25

The last stretch starts with a warning about hurrying, "Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure." That's about ordaining, and Timothy is being told to go slowly. Verse 23 breaks in with the stomach and the wine, and then the chapter goes back to the waiting.

Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after.

1 Timothy 5:24

Paul doesn't promise that waiting will turn up everything. Some men's sins show up ahead of them and some come along later. He tells Timothy to go slowly anyway.

The good gets the same treatment in verse 25. The good works of some are manifest beforehand, and the ones that aren't "cannot be hid."

— D.