1 Timothy 2:15

1 Timothy 2:15. Saved in childbearing. Better ‘ by childbearing.' There seems no ground (in spite of the authority of some great names) for taking the Greek article as giving a meaning of pre-eminence to the word that follows it ‘She shall be saved by the childbirth,' i.e. by the seed of the woman, the incarnate Christ. It is scarcely credible that St. Paul, if he meant this, would have expressed it so obscurely. We may, I believe, see in this a kind of bold Luther-like way of stating that home life rather than public life, the functions of a mother rather than of a teacher, are appointed for her. At first, it is true, the latter were assigned as a punishment; but they shall become her way of salvation, if only she fulfils the ethical relations that attach to it. Comp. the similar advice in 1 Timothy 5:14.

With sobriety. The force of the change of preposition seems to be that the other graces, excellent as they are, require, each and all, to be coupled with the self-reverence, as contrasted with self-assertion, on which St. Paul is insisting.