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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - 1 Timothy 5:4 - 5:4
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Ver. 4. If, however, any widow has children or grandchildren ( ἔêãïíá , offspring; but remoter than children, ôÝêíá , ôÝêíùí , Hesych.—grandchildren, which was once also the meaning of our nephews), let them first learn to show piety at home (or toward their own house), and requite their parents: ðñïãüíïéò , forbears, a Scottish term, exactly corresponds; and so formally does progenitors in English, only this is now commonly used of relatives in the direct line further off than those meant by the apostle. Is is best, therefore, to retain parents, but understanding by it grandparents as well. A widow in the circumstances here supposed occupies a position considerably different from the widow indeed of the preceding verse, having persons residing with her to whom, as her own children, or her children’s children, she is entitled to look for every becoming mark of honour and affection. It primarily belonged to these to do what in them lay to relieve the wants and cheer the loneliness of her widowhood; and for the most part, if that were properly done, no special oversight of the matter would need to be taken by the authorities of the church. Such appears to be by much the most natural interpretation of the passage; so that the children and grandchildren are regarded as the subjects of the learning: “let them learn,” not the any widow (as most of the ancient, and some also of the modern commentators take it, considering the ôéò ÷Þñá as equivalent to ÷Þñáé . Were this latter construction adopted, the showing piety and rendering requitals ( ἀìïéâὰò ἀðïäéäüíáé ) would necessarily lose their proper force. Filial piety and filial requitals are perfectly natural; for they correspond to the honour due from children to parents, are but different modes of expressing this; but understood of parents with reference to the conduct they should exhibit toward their children, if they can be made at all to bear such a sense, they are certainly not the forms of expression one would have looked for. What chiefly, perhaps, led to the interpretation in question, is a feeling that if widows were not the subject of the verb, there would fail to what goes before the proper apodosis; since there it is what pertains to the widows that is made prominent, while here it is what pertains to the children. In reality, however, there is no ground for such a feeling; for the instruction given is not directly addressed to the parties mentioned, but to Timothy. It is he who is charged to see to it, that matters were rightly ordered in the households of believing widows, and especially that the young should be taught to manifest respect and gratitude toward the mother that bore them, and watched over their infant years. The expression, to show piety ( åὐóåâåῖí ) to such, points back to the fifth commandment, in which the honouring of parents is placed in immediate connection with the reverence and homage due to God, and the things which most nearly concern His glory: that in youthful bosoms is the germ of fealty to God, and so its becoming exercise is reckoned a department of piety. To do this first, therefore, toward their own house, as having a prior claim even in comparison of what is due to the church or house of God, and to do it in the way of substantial ministrations of relief, which in such a case are but returns for similar ministrations formerly received (Mat_15:4-6), is acceptable before God; He regards it in a manner as done to Himself, and sees in it the earnest of future worth. The homes in which such reverential feelings are cherished, and such acts of lovingkindness are reciprocated, are the best nurseries of the church—churches themselves, indeed, in embryo, because the homes of Christian tenderness, holy affection, self-denying love, and fruitfulness in well-doing.