1 Timothy 5:9

OLBGrk;

Let not a widow be taken, into the number under threescore years old; what number he meaneth is very doubtful, whether he means the number of deaconesses, or the number of such as should receive alms from the church. Those who translate katalegesyw here chosen seem to favour the former. They say, that in the primitive church there being a want of hospials and public places for the reception of people deceased in their estates, &c., they chose some old widows to take care of the poorer sort of women when they were sick, and these also were themselves maintained by the church, and served the church in that charitable employment. Whether this number, or the more general number of widows relieved by the church, be meant, the caution of their age was very prudent:

1. Because younger widows could work for their living, and needed not to burden the church.

2. Because under those years they probably might marry again, and so become useless to the church.

3. Because after those years there could be no great fear of scandal from their wantonness and incontinency. Having been the wife of one man: this condition seems harder to be understood; for though in former times, amongst the Jews and pagans, men were allowed more wives than one at the same time, yet no laws ever allowed the woman liberty of more husbands.

2. To understand it of women that had not been twice married, their first husbands being dead, seems hard, no law of God forbidding the second marriages of men and women successively.

3. Some therefore rather understand it of such widows as were become wives to second husbands, the first not being dead, but parted from them legally, either through their own fault, or through their voluntary desertion. This the apostle seems to forbid, to avoid reproach and scandal to the church.