Loading the studies…

1 Timothy 2

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Prayer for all people

1 Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. 3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of Elohim our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one Elohim and one Mediator between Elohim and men, the Man Messiah Yeshua, 6 who gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony given in its own time, 7 for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle—I am speaking the truth in the Messiah, I am not lying—a teacher of the nations in faith and truth.

Men and women in worship

8 I desire therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and disputing. 9 In like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, 10 but, as is proper for women professing godliness, with good works. 11 Let a woman learn in quietness with all submission. 12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in quietness. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 Nevertheless she will be saved through the childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.

Notes

  • 2:2 Praying for the rulers of the nations was already Israel's practice in exile: "seek the peace of the city" and "pray to Yahweh on its behalf" (Jeremiah 29:7); Darius asked the Jews to "pray for the life of the king and his sons" (Ezra 6:10). In Paul's day, according to Josephus and Philo, sacrifices were offered daily in the Temple on behalf of the emperor and the Roman people, while Israel worshiped only Elohim. Believers in Ephesus, few and often suspected, were to pray for the same peace, so that the gospel could go forward (verse 4).
  • 2:5 Paul begins from Israel's confession, the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one!" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Because Elohim is one, He is the Elohim of all peoples (Romans 3:29-30), and so there is one Mediator for all. Moses stood between Yahweh and Israel at Sinai (Galatians 3:19); Job longed for someone to stand between him and Elohim (Job 9:33). Paul stresses that the Mediator is "the Man Messiah Yeshua," one of us, who "gave Himself a ransom for all" (verse 6), as Yeshua said He came "to give His life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).
  • 2:8 Lifting up the hands was a posture of prayer in Israel: Solomon "spread out his hands toward heaven" (1 Kings 8:22), and the psalmist sang, "Lift up your hands to the sanctuary, and bless Yahweh" (Psalm 134:2). "Holy hands" recalls the clean hands of the one who may stand in Yahweh's holy place (Psalm 24:3-4); for Paul, hands lifted in prayer cannot go together with anger and quarreling. "In every place" may echo Malachi 1:11, where Elohim's name is honored among the nations "in every place."
  • 2:12 "Quietness" (hēsychia) is the same word as the "quiet" life of verse 2; and Paul's instruction begins with "let a woman learn." The verb translated "to have authority over" (authentein) appears only here in the Bible, and its sense is debated: some take it as exercising authority, others as domineering or seizing authority. Readers have long differed on whether Paul gives a rule for every assembly or answers a situation in Ephesus, where false teachers were working through households (5:13; 2 Timothy 3:6-7); the reason he gives looks back to the order of creation in Genesis 2 (verse 13).
  • 2:15 Verse 15 is one of the hardest in the letter. Paul writes "the childbearing," with the article, and some see a reference to the promised seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), the birth of the Messiah, through whom salvation came; others understand the ordinary calling of women as mothers, in which they live out their salvation, and others again understand that women will be kept safe through childbirth. The subject changes from "she" (Eve, and women like her) to "they," those who continue in faith, love and holiness.

1 Timothy 1 · 1 Timothy 3

Open in the study app