Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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142 First Timothy Y. 23, 24.
Ver. 23.—The words. Iccep thyself pure, as aJdressccl to Timothy
pcrsonallvj have prepared the way for the transition to what is said
in this verse ;
but this " medicinal advice," nevertheless appears on
this account very strange. What is there in .the words keej) thyself
pure, that could lead the writer even by any association of ideas to
this counsel ? This association will be found to be not so remote
when those passages are called to mind, iii. 3, 8, in which the apostle
insists on moderation in the use of wine by a presbyter or deacon,
chiefly, however, that which contains the warning against
bodily service, iv. 8. Timothy may have been ascetically strict in
this point to an improper degree ; ver. 23 would thus be a limitation
of the words, keep thyself pure, in ver. 22. With respect to
abstinence from wine, one has only to call to mind the Nazarenes
of the Old Testament, Num. vi. 1-21 ; the Essenes, Luke i. 15
Rom. xiv., in order easily to understand how there might be an
ascetical tendency in this direction in the apostolic period ; and we
by no means, therefore, need to suppose in the words any opposition
to the Gnostics of the second century (Baur). Thus also does
Olshausen understand the connexion, and so do many of the more
ancient and more modern commentators, comp. Leo, De Wette.
The passage, therefore, will not deserve to be characterized as " an
awkwardly introduced particularity" (Schleiermacher). 'Tdpo-rorsco,
not aquam bibo, as Wahl, — vdu)p ttIvuv ; but, to be a water drinker
= to drink only water, comp. Winer's Gr., § 55, 8, 442, On
use a little luine, Chrysostom says :
" as much as is needful for
health, not for luxury." Timothy's state of body is assigned as the
reason of this advice : for his stomach's sake and liis frequent indispositions.
Ycr. 24, seq., follow again without any indication of the connexion.
Do they belong to the warning against making himself partaker of
other men's sins, or to the keep thyself pure, and ver. 23 ? For the
determination of this point, we have in what precedes no further
clue than is given in the circumstance, that the apostle seems in the
word atavTov to have made the transition to the })erson of Timothy ;
the point must therefore chiefly be determined by the sense of the
verscB tliemselves. The apostle specifies in ver. 24 two kinds of
sins ; those which arc manifest and those which, follow after; those
which are manifest are further explained in the words ijoing before
tojuihjment. The o[)positiou here then is, between sins that are
open = going before, and sins that are hid = following after, as is
evident also from ver. 25, where, in like manner {doavruiq) , the good
works are divided into those that are manifest and those that are
otherwise^ by which latter, as ISchleiermacher has already observed,
are not to be understood such as are the opposite of