Titus 2:4

4. to be sober--Greek, "self-restrained," "discreet"; the same Greek as in Tit 2:2, "temperate." (But see on Tit 2:2; compare Note, 2Ti 1:7). Alford therefore translates, "That they school (admonish in their duty) the young women to be lovers of their husbands," &c. (the foundation of all domestic happiness). It was judicious that Titus, a young man, should admonish the young women, not directly, but through the older women.

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown, 1871 · public domain

Verse 4. That they may teach the young women to be sober. Marg., wise --a word similar to that which in Tit 2:2 is rendered temperate, and in 1Timm 3:2, sober. The meaning is, that they should instruct them to have their desires and passions well regulated, or under proper control.

To love their husbands, φιλανδρους. This word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. In Eph 5:25, Paul directs husbands to love their wives, and in Eph 5:33, the wife to reverence her husband, and here he says that it should be one of the first duties enjoined on the wife that she should love her husband. All happiness in the marriage relation is based on mutual love. When that departs, happiness departs. No wealth or splendour in a dwelling--no gorgeousness of equipage or apparel-- no magnificence of entertainment or sweetness of music--and no forms of courtesy and politeness, can be a compensation for the want of affection. Mutual love between a husband and wife will diffuse comfort through the obscurest cottage of poverty; the want of it cannot be supplied by all that can be furnished in the palaces of the great.

To love their children. Nature prompts to this, and yet there are those so depraved that they have no maternal affection. Rom 1:31. Religion reproduces natural affection when sin has weakened or destroyed it, and it is the design of Christianity to recover and invigorate all the lost or weakened sensibilities of our nature.

(b) "the young women" 1Timm 5:14 (4) "sober" "wise"

Albert Barnes, 1834 · public domain

Verse 4 That they may teach the young women to be sober - That it was natural for the young to imitate the old will be readily allowed; it was therefore necessary that the old should be an example of godly living to the young. St. Jerome, taking it for granted that drunkenness and impurity are closely connected, asks this serious question: Quomodo potest docere anus adolescentulas castitatem, cum, si ebrietatem vetulae mulieris adolescentula fuerit imitata, pudica esse non possit? "How can an elderly woman teach young women chastity, when, if the young woman should imitate the drunkenness of the matron, it would be impossible for her to be chaste?" To love their husbands - The duties recommended in this and the following verses are so plain as to need no comment; and so absolutely necessary to the character of a wife, that no one deserves the name who does not live in the practice of them.

Adam Clarke, 1831 · public domain