1 Timothy 2:15

σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας : The penalty for transgression, so far as woman is concerned, was expressed in the words, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). But just as in the case of man, the world being as it is, the sentence has proved a blessing, so it is in the case of woman. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” expresses man's necessity, duty, privilege, dignity. If the necessity of work be “a stumbling-block,” man can “make it a stepping-stone” (Browning, The Ring and the Book, The Pope, 413), Nay, it is the only stepping-stone available to him. If St. Paul's argument had led him to emphasise the man's part in the first transgression, he might have said, “He shall be saved in his toil,” his overcoming the obstacles of nature.

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. She shall be saved in her childbearing (R.V. m. nearly). That is her normal and natural duty; and in the discharge of our normal and natural duties we all, men and women alike, as far as our individual efforts can contribute to it, “work out our own salvation”.

This explanation gives an adequate force to σωθήσεται, and preserves the natural and obvious meaning of τεκνογονία, and gives its force to τῆς. διά here has hardly an instrumental force (as Vulg. per filiorum generationem); it is rather the διά of accompanying circumstances, as in 1 Corinthians 3:15. σωθήσεται … διὰ πυρός. It remains to note three other explanations:

(1) She shall be “preserved in the great danger of child-birth”.

(2) Women shall be saved if they bring up their children well, as if τεκνογονία = τεκνοτροφία. So Chrys.

(3) She shall be saved by means of the Childbearing “of Mary, which gave to the world the Author of our Salvation” (Liddon). “The peculiar function of her sex (from its relation to her Saviour) shall be the medium of her salvation” (Ellicott). The R.V., saved through the childbearing, is possibly patient of this interpretation. No doubt it was the privilege of woman alone to be the medium of the Incarnation. This miraculous fact justifies us perhaps in pressing the language of Genesis 3:15, “thy seed,” and in finding an allusion (though this is uncertain) in Galatians 4:4, γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός; but woman cannot be said to be saved by means of a historic privilege, even with the added qualification, “if they continue,” etc. See Luke 11:27-28, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee.… Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God,” etc.

ἐὰν μείνωσιν : This use of μένειν with ἐν and an abstract noun is chiefly Johannine, as the reff. show.

The subject of μείνωσιν is usually taken to be γυναῖκες; but inasmuch as St. Paul has been speaking of women in the marriage relation, it seems better to understand the plural of the woman and her husband. Compare 1 Corinthians 7:36 where γαμείτωσαν refers to the παρθένος and her betrothed, whose existence is implied in the question of her marriage. If this view be accepted, then πίστις, ἀγάπη, and ἁγιασμός refer respectively to the duties of the man and wife to God, to society, and to each other: faith towards God, love to the community, and sanctification in their marital relations. See chap. 1 Timothy 4:12 where these three virtues are again combined. See 1 Timothy 2:9 for σωφροσύνη.