Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old. — The question respecting the assistance to be afforded to the poor and destitute widows of the great Asian Church reminded St. Paul of an organisation, consisting of widowed women, which had grown out of the needs of Christianity. He would lay down some special rules here to be observed by his friend and disciple. What, now, is this organisation commended to Timothy in these special directions? Here, and here only in the New Testament, do we find it alluded to; but the instructions in this passage are so definite, so precise, that it is impossible not to assume in the days of Timothy and of Paul, in some, if not in all the great churches, the existence of an official band of workers, consisting of widows, most carefully selected from the congregation of believers, of a somewhat advanced age, and specially distinguished for devotion — possessing, each of these, a high and stainless reputation — they were an official band of workers, a distinct order, so to speak; for these widows, formally entered on the Church’s list, could not possibly represent those poor and desolate widows, friendless and destitute, spoken of above. The minimum age of sixty years would also exclude many; and the advice of St. Paul to the younger ones to marry again could never have been addressed to women wanting even many years of the requisite “sixty.” Were these poor souls to be formally shut out from receiving the Church’s alms? Again, those on the list could never be the same persons whom we hear of as deaconesses (Romans 16:1, and in the Christian literature of the second century). The active duties of the office would have been utterly incompatible with the age of sixty, the minimum age at which these were to be entered on the list. We then conclude these “widows” were a distinct and most honourable order, whose duties, presbyteral rather than diaconic, apparently consisted in the exercise of superintendence over, and in the ministry of counsel and consolation to, the younger women. — That they sat unveiled in the assemblies in a separate place by the presbyters; that they received a special ordination by laying on of hands; that they wore a peculiar dress — were distinctions probably belonging to a later age.
Having been the wife of one man. — Of the conditions of enrolment in this “order,” the first — that of age — has been alluded to; the second — “having been the wife of one man” — must not be understood in the strictly literal sense of the words. It is inconceivable that the hope of forming one of the highly honoured band of presbyteral women depended on the chance of the husband living until the wife had reached the age of sixty years. Had he died in her youth, or comparative youth, the Apostle’s will was that the widow should marry again. (See 1 Timothy 5:14, where St. Paul writes, “I will that the younger women marry,” &c.)
The right interpretation of the words is found in some such paraphrase as, “If in her married life she had been found faithful and true.” The fatal facility of divorce and the lax state of morality in Pagan society, especially in the Greek and Asiac cities, must be taken into account when we seek to illustrate and explain these directions respecting early Christian foundations.
While unhesitatingly adopting the above interpretation of the words “wife of one man,” as faithfully representing the mind of St. Paul, who was legislating here, it must be remembered, for the masses of believers whose lot was cast in the busy world (see his direct command in 1 Timothy 5:14 of this chapter, where the family life is pressed on the younger widow, and not the higher life of solitude and self-denial), still those expositors who adopt the stricter and sterner interpretation of “wife of one man” — viz., “a woman that has had only one husband” — have, it must be granted, a strong argument in their favour from the known honour the univircæ obtained in the Roman world. So Dido, in Æn. iv. 28, says —
“Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit, ille habeat secum, servetque sepulcher.”
Compare, too, the examples of the wives of Lucan, Drusus, and Pompey, who, on the death of their husbands, devoted the remainder of their lives to retirement and to the memory of the dead. The title univiræ graved on certain Roman tombs shows how this devotion was practised and esteemed. “To love a wife when living is a pleasure, to love her when dead is an act of religion,” wrote Statius —
“Uxorem vivam amare voluptas
Defunctam religio.”
— Statius, Sylv. v., in Proæmio.
And see, for other instances, Lecky, Hist. of European Morals, chap. 5.
But it seems highly improbable that the delicate and touching feeling, which had taken root certainly in some (alas! in only a small number) of the nobler Roman minds, influenced St. Paul, who, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, was laying down rules for a great and world-wide society, which was to include the many, not the few, chosen souls — was legislating for the masses, to whom such an expressed wish would indeed be “a counsel of perfection” rarely to be carried out; and so, without hesitation, we adopt the more practical interpretation given above.