In the final of four posts about stereotypical approaches to “women” passages, let’s look at Titus 2:5.  Specifically, let’s consider the word/phrase, “homemakers,” or “keepers at home.”

Contextually

This is part of a three-verse section summarizing what Titus should instruct women in, within a larger passage that also includes instructions for the men.

(3) the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— (4) that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, (5) to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

As you can see, “homemakers” here is a single word.  That doesn’t make it unimportant, by any means, but it does mean that context is especially important.  We can’t build a whole doctrine on a single word, without context.

Let’s look, first of all, at the word itself.

“Homemakers”

The word — in Greek it’s a single word — is translated in various ways.

NKJV, HCSB: homemakers

KJV: keepers at home

GENEVA: keeping at home

ESV: working at home

NASB: workers at home

NIV: busy at home

They obviously have some similarities, but the subtle differences between them reflect the difficulty of conveying in English the nuance of a Greek word.

It gets a little more complicated, though.  There’s a difference of a single letter between groups of manuscripts, which is why some of the translations talk about “workers” at home and others about “keepers” at home.  One does actually refer to working and the other is “keeping” as in guarding.  It’s a bit like a watchman at the door.

They are both nouns, not verbs.  That is, the passage is saying that women are to be home-workers or home-keepers, not that working at home or keeping the home is something they’re to do (although, obviously, “being” will translate to action).  Homemaker probably really is the closest modern English equivalent — but it doesn’t necessarily capture all the nuance, which is why I wanted to point these other things out about the word’s origin.

What’s the Point?

Expanding now beyond the word itself, we have a question to answer.  When Paul tells Titus to have the older women teach the younger to be homemakers, what is the alternative?

The common assumption is that working at home is in contrast to working somewhere else.  But is that consistent with the understanding the original readers would have had?  Our whole economy is different from theirs.  In our culture, work-for-pay ordinarily takes place outside of and completely independent from the home. But a first-century Cretan didn’t drive to a high-rise in the city and work in a cubicle for 8 hours.  Most businesses were “cottage industries,” rooted in the family who owned them and with varying degrees of the work actually occurring at home and elsewhere.

The “Proverbs 31 woman” planted a vineyard, sold her sewing to the merchants, etc. — and these things were all depicted as praiseworthy.  Abraham & David, meanwhile, both worked at home, so to speak.

In short, they simply didn’t have the same dichotomy between “work” and “home,” so it’s anachronistic to read that into the text.  It can be illuminating to look at this passage alongside another passage — the one in 1 Timothy 5 where Paul tells another young pastor how to properly instruct a congregation.

1 Timothy 5:11-15

In 1 Timothy 5, Paul is telling Timothy how to care for the widows in the church.  The older widows who have lived faithful lives are to be cared for by the church if they don’t have family to take care of them.  But then he goes on to give instructions for young widows:

(11) As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. (12) Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. (13) Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. (14) So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. (15) Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.

The instructions for the widows who have remarried seem obviously to be relevant for all married women.  There are some obvious parallels between this passage and the one in Titus.  And yet here we have increased context.

They are to marry, have children, manage their homes, and give the enemy no opportunity for slander.  Giving the enemy no opportunity for slander has echoes of Titus’s “that the word of God may not be blasphemed.”

Significantly, we read here about what they were doing that was giving the enemy such opportunity: they were being idle busybodies, flitting about from house to house talking nonsense.

“Don’t do this” — be idle, wandering gossips — “do that” — take diligent care of your own home and family.

We might even just summarize this as “mind your own business.”

Contextually and culturally, the overall message is likely the same in Titus 2.  Not “work at home; don’t work somewhere else,” but “remain diligently occupied with your own life and responsibilities.”

What I’m Not Saying

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to downplay the “home and family” aspect of this.  I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s talking about husbands, children, and home.  Proverbs tells us that “the wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands,” and I think there’s an echo of that here, too.

But I think we moderns try to create contrasts here that Paul did not intend, both between working at home and working not-at-home, and between women’s focus on building up their homes and families and men’s focus on building up their homes and families (where both were more family-rooted in that day than we are).

There isn’t necessarily carte blanche to hold any job under any circumstances, because we do need to build up our families, train and nurture our children, etc.  But it’s reading into the text to claim that this verse is teaching that women should not work outside the home.  That isn’t what the verse is about.