1 Timothy 4:12

1 Timothy 4:12. Let no man despise thy youth. The words point to a danger to which St. Paul knew that his disciple was exposed. We have no accurate dates as to the life of Timothy, but the tone of Acts 16:1 and 2 Timothy 1:5; 2 Timothy 3:15, seems to imply an age, say, between fifteen and twenty, at the time when he is first mentioned in the Acts. On this assumption, he would be, at the date of the Epistle (placing it after St. Paul's first imprisonment at Rome), from twenty-eight to thirty-three, about the age when St. Paul is described as a ‘young man' in Acts 7:58. At that age he would naturally be much younger than many of the bishop elders of the Church over whom he was to exercise authority, and they might be tempted to taunt him with his inexperience. The ascetic life to which Timothy was inclined, accompanied perhaps by some shyness and timidity, might make him more than usually sensitive under such circumstances.

Be thou an example. Better ‘ become, implying daily growth towards the ideal standard.

In conversation. Better, ‘ behavior' or ‘ conduct.' Here, as elsewhere, there is little or no hope of restoring ‘conversation' to its true meaning.

Purity, as in 1 Timothy 4:2, with the special half-technical sense of ‘chastity' in act, word, thought.