1 Timothy 5:14-15

‘I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children, rule the household, give no occasion to the adversary for reviling, for already some are turned aside after Satan.

He does not disagree with their intention to have children. Indeed he fully agrees that it would be the best thing for them. For if they marry, produce children, and run the household, thus fulfilling God’s will (1 Timothy 2:15), they will have no time for idleness and will not as a result give any opponent of the church (or, less likely, ‘the Adversary himself’) any opportunity to revile them. And he knows what he is talking about, for he knows how foolish some younger marriageable women of his acquaintance have been in the past. They may well even have helped to spread the old wives’ tales, which is probably what he means by their ‘turning aside after Satan’, although the alternative possibility is immorality. Older women would not have been so vulnerable. They were more single-minded without having so many other possibilities of life to distract them. Seemingly the church was now in the happy position of being able to pick and choose so that it was not a problem of finding people. It was rather a problem of ensuring that they chose the most suitable.

The word ‘occasion’ is another military metaphor signifying ‘a base of operations’. See its use in Romans 7:8; Romans 7:11; 2Co 5:12 ; 2 Corinthians 11:12; Galatians 5:13.