“Pure.” This is either equivalent to chastity, or chastity means marital fidelity and the restrained use of the pleasures of the marriage bed, while purity means keeping the heart as detached as possible from these delights. Still more, it means not allowing oneself to be carried away by love for outsiders.
Blessed Theophylact writes: “A woman who loves her husband will be chaste and undefiled, that is, pure in body and heart, both from union with outsiders and from lustful love for them.”
“Good managers of the home.” Along with love for husband and children, household management and all domestic affairs lie upon the wife. This requires no small labor, and still more prudence and zeal. But when the love mentioned above is present, it will teach the woman everything.
Chrysostom says: “Every good thing comes from love. From love and attachment to the husband, wives become good and attentive to the home. By contrast, a wife who despises her husband neglects the home also.
“From love comes constant chastity. By love every quarrel is destroyed. If the husband is a pagan, he will soon be converted. If he is a Christian, he will become better.
“Do you see Paul’s condescension? He who in every way tried to turn us away from worldly cares now shows great care for domestic affairs. For when these matters are well governed, then spiritual matters also find a place. Otherwise they too fall into disorder.
“A wife attentive to the home will also be chaste. A wife attentive to the home will also be frugal. She will not permit luxury, untimely expenses, or anything else of this sort.”
“Good.” When they love husbands and children, they are already good toward them. Yet it is possible that, by becoming too absorbed in care for the household, they grow attached to worldly things and fall into stinginess, depriving family members of what is due them.
In addition, there are servants in a family, and some mistresses, out of concern for the household, are not good toward them. Moreover, besides satisfying the needs of family members, one cannot leave outsiders in need without attention.
Therefore, so that attentive housekeepers not become, for that very reason, stingy, harsh toward servants, and unmerciful toward the needy, the Apostle commands them to be good while caring for the home. Some read it this way: oikourgous agathas, “good housekeepers,” without separating these words by a comma.
Blessed Jerome writes: “Young women must be taught to have care for the home. But since it could happen that some would carry out this care with harshness, and, on the pretext of the Apostle’s command, a mistress might become unmerciful toward servants, the Apostle added, ‘good.’
“This is so that women who manage households may consider themselves to govern their homes well when they treat servants kindly, and not with harshness that produces fear.”
“Subject to their own husbands.” The subjection of wives to husbands is God’s original judgment. It is fulfilled naturally, so that departure from it is an exception to the common natural order of things.
The Apostle sets it forth “so that Christian wives, for any reason whatever, not forget this divine decree, which subjects them to their husbands. God said to the woman: ‘Your turning shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you’ (cf. Gen 3:16).
“The Lord did not say to the husband, ‘You shall rule over your wife,’ but to the wife herself. This was so that the reward for obedience might remain hers, if, willingly submitting to God’s command, she willingly serves her husband and submits to her spouse.
“Thus this subjection is free and filled with love, by which they submit to the husband in everything, fearing to offend him. The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man.
“And as the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ, a woman who does not submit to her husband, that is, to her head, is guilty of the same offense as a man who does not submit to Christ, his Head,” says blessed Jerome.
But the Apostle sets forth a special motive for Christian wives to submit to their husbands: “that the word of God may not be blasphemed.” If a formerly obedient wife becomes disobedient after becoming a Christian, she gives her husband a just occasion to blaspheme the word of God, or the Gospel.
He may say: what sort of word of God or what sort of faith is this, which teaches wives not to submit to their husbands? Harm will come to the Gospel and the faith. To prevent this, besides the general divine decree that wives remain in subjection to husbands, the Apostle also moves them by the danger of harming the word of God.
Chrysostom says: “Do you see that he is chiefly concerned for preaching, and not for worldly affairs? Thus also, concerning subjection to authorities, in the Epistle to Timothy he says: ‘that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all piety and purity’ (cf. 1 Tim 2:2). Here he says: ‘that the word of God may not be blasphemed.’
“If a believing wife living with an unbelieving husband is not virtuous, blasphemy is usually uttered against God. But if she lives honorably, the preaching gains glory from her and her good works.
“Let wives who live with evil or unbelieving husbands hear this. Let them hear and learn to draw them to piety by their conduct. Even if you gain no other benefit, and even if you do not draw your husband into communion with right dogmas, you will at least stop his mouth and not allow him to blaspheme Christianity.
“And this is no small matter, but a great one: that our teaching be respected because of our conduct.”
Ambrosiaster writes the same: let wives be well subject to their husbands, “so that husbands, if they are unbelievers, may rejoice rather that they have become Christian women, and not blaspheme the name of God. For they see that their wives obey them more readily, fearing to offend God through the prompting of their faith.”
Were there not also cases, as blessed Theodoret surmises, “that some, under the pretext of piety, left their husbands, and this brought blasphemy upon the preaching”?
THEOSIS