If you have read at least some of the previous posts in this series on 1 Timothy, I hope you are beginning to see a fuller picture of the context and confusion that has surrounded women for centuries. And there is more! The web of deception has been woven into a complex and confusing mess for far too long.
PAGAN PRACTICES AND CHILDBIRTH
1 Timothy 2:15 Women, however, will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.
This is widely recognized as one of the most difficult verses in the New Testament. There have been many different interpretations throughout the centuries. One theologian described it as “bizarre,” while another called it “preposterous.”
I’m not going to go deeply into the most common interpretations here. They have already been discussed and perpetuated through centuries of commentaries and theological writing. I’ll share a sampling from some of the commentaries in the comments below for those who are interested. Instead, I want to focus on something that is often overlooked: the cultural lens of the various pagan goddesses worshipped in Ephesus and the surrounding region.
When I shared this perspective with someone who had parsed this verse in Greek for a seminary class and had always found it confusing, this historical context immediately made sense to her and helped clear up years of confusion. There have been occasional hints of this interpretation, but the historical and cultural context surrounding childbirth, goddess worship, and Ephesus is often overlooked or dismissed.
THE HISTORICAL PROBLEM: CHILDBIRTH WAS DANGEROUS
Women were physically dying in childbirth. Maternal mortality in the ancient world was a significant problem, and childbirth was one of the major threats to women during their childbearing years. Naturally, women and families sought divine protection.
In Ephesus, the most prominent goddess associated with divine protection was Artemis. But other goddesses in the region were also associated with childbirth and protection during labor, including Cybele, Eileithyia, and Hecate. Expecting mothers would seek the protection of these deities through prayers, offerings, rituals, and other practices intended to ensure a safe delivery.
For women who converted to Christianity, abandoning these practices and beliefs would not necessarily have happened overnight. Conversion did not mean that every previous belief, fear, habit, or religious practice immediately disappeared. Some may have continued turning to familiar gods and goddesses for protection, particularly when facing something as frightening and potentially deadly as childbirth.
A DIFFERENT WAY OF READING 1 TIMOTHY 2:15
When we take seriously both the dangers of childbirth and the pagan religious context surrounding it, 1 Timothy 2:15 takes on a potentially different meaning. Paul may be pastorally addressing women who had been accustomed to looking to pagan goddesses for protection during childbirth. The message could essentially be:
You do not need to fear childbirth. You do not need to seek protection from other deities. Your trust belongs in Jesus. Continue in faith, love, holiness, and sound-minded self-control.
This is especially interesting because the language Paul uses for “saved” in this passage would have been meaningful to people living in a world where goddesses were believed to have power over pregnancy, labor, and childbirth.
A NOTE ABOUT “SHE” AND “THEY”
There is also an important grammatical detail that often gets lost in English translations. The Greek verb in verse 15 is third person singular. Literally, it is “she will be saved,” rather than the plural “women will be saved” found in some English translations. Paul then shifts to the third person plural when he says, “if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.”
That grammatical shift is important to pay attention to. It is possible that Paul is referring to a specific woman in the immediate context and then broadening the statement to include her and others. It could even refer to a specific couple, perhaps a husband and wife, depending on how the surrounding verses are understood.
This possibility is worth considering because it changes how we might hear the passage. Rather than making a universal statement that “women are saved through childbirth,” Paul may be addressing a particular situation involving a woman, childbirth, and the fears or religious practices surrounding it.
PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL SAFETY
I think there may be another important distinction here. The word “saved” does not necessarily have to be reduced to one narrow meaning. Paul could be speaking about physical safety, spiritual salvation, or intentionally allowing both ideas to overlap. The encouragement is not that every Christian woman will physically survive childbirth. Sadly, women still die in childbirth today, and certainly many did in the ancient world. Rather, the message may be that women do not need to live in fear or seek supernatural protection from other gods. They can trust God.
Their posture should be one of faith, love, holiness, and sound-minded self-control, because there is no need for fear. God knows our days. And even if one of God's daughters does not survive childbirth, she is still spiritually safe in Christ. Christian faith does not promise that nothing physically painful or tragic will ever happen to us; it instead promises that death itself does not have the final word.
CONCLUSION
Could 1 Timothy 2:15 be referring to both physical and spiritual salvation?
I think we definitely should consider this! In a culture where childbirth was dangerous and where women were accustomed to seeking protection from goddesses associated with childbirth, Paul may be reassuring Christian women that they do not need to fear. They do not need another deity, ritual, spell, or incantation to protect them.
They can trust God. They are called to continue in faith, love, holiness, and a sound mind. And even when physical safety is not guaranteed, spiritual safety in Christ is. Women do not need to live in fear. Even if God's daughters would not survive childbirth, they are still safe with Jesus.
Comments
I TIMOTHY 2:15
Here’s a link if you want to check out commentaries on this verse, the commentaries are quite eye opening! 1 Timothy 2:15 Commentaries: But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.
Several commentaries refer to childbirth as part of the curse. Only the ground and the serpent were specifically cursed in Genesis 3. Weeds and pain/sorrow in childbirth are consequences, not a curse. Maybe it’s semantics for some, but I believe there are significant differences between a consequence and curse. Instead of a curse, God gave Eve the promise that her seed would bring about the One Who would crush the enemy.
Children, and every person, are a precious and priceless blessing!
I’ve made a list of interesting excerpts from commentaries for a bit of an idea of how this verse was interpreted:
Ellicott’s…: Though their life duties must be different from those of men—yet for them, too, as for men, there was one glorious goal; but for them—the women of Christ—the only road to the goal was the faithful, true carrying out of the quiet home duties he had just sketched out for them. In other words, women will win the great salvation; but if they would win it, they must fulfil their destiny; they must acquiesce in all the conditions of a woman’s life—in the forefront of which St. Paul places the all-important functions and duties of a mother.
Benson: The apostle having intimated that the man was superior by creation, and the subjection of the woman increased by the fall…
Matthew Henry: As woman was last in the creation, which is one reason for her subjection, so she was first in the transgression. But there is a word of comfort; that those who continue in sobriety, shall be saved in child-bearing, or with child-bearing, by the Messiah, who was born of a woman. And the especial sorrow to which the female sex is subject, should cause men to exercise their authority with much gentleness, tenderness, and affection.
Barnes: In regard to the nature of the consolation referred to here, there has been a considerable variety of opinion. Some have held, that by the expression "she shall be saved in child-bearing," the apostle designs to include all the duties of the maternal relation, meaning that she should be saved through the faithful performance of her duties as a mother.
More from Barnes: The general sentiments of the Jews in regard to the salvation of the female sex, and their exclusion from the religious privileges which men enjoy; the views of the Muslims in reference to the inferiority of the sex; and the prevalent feelings in the pagan world, degrading the sex and making their condition, in regard to salvation, far inferior to that of man, show the propriety of what the apostle here says, and the fitness that he should so guard himself that his language could not possibly be construed so as to give countenance to such a sentiment.
Jamieson – Fausset – Brown: sobriety—"sober-mindedness" (see on [2468]1Ti 2:9, as contrasted with the unseemly forwardness reproved in 1Ti 2:11). Mental receptivity and activity in family life were recognized in Christianity as the destiny of woman. One reason alleged here by Paul, is the greater danger of self-deception in the weaker sex, and the spread of errors arising from it, especially in a class of addresses in which sober reflectiveness is least in exercise [Neander]. The case (Ac 21:9) was doubtless in private, not in public.
Matthew Poole: Though the woman was so unhappy as to be deceived by the serpent, and to be the first in taking the forbidden fruit, and an instrument to entice her husband to do the like, which may give all of that sex a cause of humiliation, and show them the reasonableness of God’s order in putting them in subjection to man, and prohibiting them to break God’s order in usurping authority over the man; yet through the gracious interposition of the Mediator, (afterward born of a woman), she hath no reason to despair, either of a temporal salvation, from the peril and danger of child-birth, or, much less, of an eternal salvation, for… she shall be saved;
Meyer’s: after the apostle has forbidden to the woman any activity in church assemblies as unbecoming to her, he now points to the destiny assigned her by God, the fulfilment of which brings salvation to her.
Geneva Study Bible: He adds a comfort by the way, that their subjection does not hinder women from being saved as well as men, if they behave themselves in those duties of marriage in a holy and modest manner, with faith and charity.
Expositor’s Greek Testament: So St. Paul, taking the common-sense view that childbearing, rather than public teaching or the direction of affairs, is woman’s primary function duty, privilege and dignity, reminds Timothy and his readers that there was another aspect of the story in Genesis besides that of woman’s taking the initiative in transgression: the pains of childbirth were her sentence, yet in undergoing these she finds her salvation.
Cambridge Bible for Schools…: ‘through her childbearing’: ‘her child-bearing which is her curse may be her highest blessing, as with man’s doom, labour; her domestic life and duties, the sphere of woman’s mission, St Paul lays great stress on good works, the performance of the common duties of life, in opposition to the irregularities of the times; and yet adds the necessary previous condition “if they abide in faith”
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