What Does 1 Timothy 5:2 Mean?
The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, in all cleanness.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.THE KEY
The verse makes purity the quality of kinship-like closeness, not distance from it.
THE MEANING
The women in the reader’s life are held within a family frame: elders as mothers, younger women as sisters. The word for “sisters” is traditionally linked to the idea of “same womb,” making the kinship image concrete. “With all purity” holds that closeness in a clear, undefiled relation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that purity requires cold distance: the verse pairs purity with maternal and sibling closeness.
THE ROOT
ἀδελφάς
adelphas
GROWS FROM
ἀδελφ-
adelph-
Siblinghood, traditionally associated with “same womb.”
“sisters” in this verse is adelphas. The Greek word names a sister through kinship, not merely through politeness. That family word turns the relationship into one of belonging and care.
ALSO GROWS
adelphos: brother
ἀδελφός
The masculine form shares the same sibling stem, showing that the verse’s family frame belongs to a wider kinship vocabulary.
adelphotēs: brotherhood, sibling community
ἀδελφότης
The same stem extends sibling language to a whole community, revealing how kinship can describe a bond of belonging.
ἁγνείᾳ
hagneia
GROWS FROM
ἁγν-
hagn-
Pure, clean, chaste.
The word belongs to a family of terms for both purity and purification. Here, purity describes the cleanness of the relationship itself, keeping familial closeness free of sexual claim.
ALSO GROWS
hagnos: pure, chaste
ἁγνός
This related adjective describes the quality of being pure, illuminating purity here as a character of the relationship.
hagnizō: cleanse, purify
ἁγνίζω
This related verb describes the act of purification, showing how the word family can name both a clean state and the movement toward it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives relational regard the shape of kinship, where honor and clean affection share the same bond.
You shall rise up before the gray head, and adorn the face of the elder, and stand in awe of your God. I am the LORD.For whoever does the will of God, this one is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.Be tender toward one another with the affection of kin. Go before one another in honor.THE THREAD
For whoever does the will of God, this one is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.Both verses use ἀδελφή (adelphē, “sister”), a word traditionally associated with “same womb.” Here that kinship word shapes regard for younger women; in Mark, it widens the family named by brother, sister, and mother around those who do God’s will.
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