Titus 2:4
That they may teach the young women to be wise, to love their husbands, to love their children,
Open Titus 2:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- ut prudentiam doceant adolescentulas, ut viros suos ament, filios suos diligant,
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ἵνα σωφρονίζωσι τὰς νέας φιλάνδρους εἶναι, φιλοτέκνους,
Haydock's commentary
Love their husbands. This is the first lesson he wishes to be given to young women; that they should always manifest a love, an attachment, respect and obedience to their husbands. But it must be a chaste love. Vult eas amare viros suos castè; vult inter virum et mulierem esse pudicam dilectionem. (St. Jerome)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter XX. A Good Wife
For with perfect propriety Scripture has said that woman is given by God as “an help” to man. It is evident, then, in my opinion, that she will charge herself with remedying, by good sense and persuasion, each of the annoyances that originate with her husband in domestic economy. And if he do not yield, then she will endeavour, as far as possible for human nature, to lead a sinless life; whether it be necessary to die, in accordance with reason, or to live; considering that God is her helper and associate in such a course of conduct, her true defender and Saviour both for the present and for the future; making Him the leader and guide of all her actions, reckoning sobriety and righteousness her work, and making the favour of God her end. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Matthew V. 27, 28
But if thou desirest to hear also His rebuke for them in particular, listen to Isaiah,in many words inveighing against them, and deriding their habit, their aspect, their gait, their trailing garments, their tripping feet, their drooping necks. Hear with him the blessed Paulalso, setting many laws for them; and both about garments, and ornaments of gold, and plaiting of hair, and luxuriousliving, and all other such things, vehemently rebuking this sex. And Christ too, by what follows next, obscurely intimated this very same; for when He saith, “pluck out and cut off the eye that offendeth thee,” He speaks as indicating His anger against them.
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Titus 2:2-5
Titus ii. 2-5 “That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” There are some failings which age has, that youth has not. Some indeed it has in common with youth, but in addition it has a slowness, a timidity, a forgetfulness, an insensibility, and an irritability. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Titus 2:2-5
Ver. 4 . “That they may teach the young women to be sober.” Observe how he binds the people together, how he subjects the younger women to the elder. For he is not speaking there of daughters, but merely in respect of age. Let each of the elder women, he means, teach any one that is younger to be sober. “To love their husbands.”