1 Timothy 2:8

1 Timothy 2:8. That men. Better, as in the Greek, ‘ the men,' as distinguished from the women. The ‘praying' spoken of is not a mental act, but part of the public worship of the Church, and is therefore limited to the men. The sequence of thought implied in ‘therefore,' is that the new view of humanity, of national life, of social order, that had been set forth in the preceding verses, should influence men's worship, and keep them from the temptation to which a strong religious emotion is exposed, of turning prayers into harangues, full of ‘wrath and debate.' The rule implies, what is indeed obvious throughout the New Testament, that the utterances of prayer were not confined to the Bishop or Elder who presided (1 Corinthians 11:4; 1 Corinthians 14:26-31).

In every place. The words do not appear to have been written with any intention of proclaiming, as our Lord did in John 4:23, the acceptableness of true worship independently of local sanctity, but rather to emphasize the fact that the rule laid down was binding in the more private meetings of disciples as well as in the public gathering of the Ecclesia.

Lifting up holy hands. It would seem as if the older attitude of prayer both among Jews and Greeks still obtained in the Christian Church. Men stood (as in Luke 18:11) and prayed with outstretched hands. Those hands were to be ‘holy,' uplifted in adoration, not in the vehemence of passion.

Without wrath and doubting. The latter word is misleading, and out of harmony with the context. Stress is laid, not, as in James 1:6, on the necessity of faith in prayer, but on the inconsistency of the spirit of strife and debate with true worship. The word is for the most part translated ‘thoughts' (as in Matthew 15:19), but ‘reasonings,' whether inward or outward, give a better meaning, and so it oscillates between ‘doubt' in the former, ‘debate' or ‘disputing' in the latter case. And here the second meaning is obviously preferable. Comp. Philippians 2:14.