Bible Commentary | Titus 2:4-5

Titus 2:4-5 (CSB) 4 so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission to their husbands, so that God’s word will not be slandered.

workers at home

See word study | 3626: homemaker (oikouros)

HCSB “homemakers”

NIV “to be busy at home”

NLT “to work in their homes”

KJV “keepers at home”

NTMS “industrious in their homes”

MSG “keep a good house”

“The word here for homemaker is a compound Greek word from two common words.  The first is the usual word for ‘home’ or ‘house and its environs.’ The second is the word for ‘work’ or ‘labor.’”  Bruce Wilkinson, Experiencing Spiritual Breakthroughs, p. 149

Commenting on Titus 2:5, Stanley N. Helton defines a homemaker as “supervis[ing] their households with discretion and industry.” “Titus 2:5—Must Women Stay at Home?” Essays on Women in Earliest Christianity,” ed. Carrol D. Osburn, 376.

The Pulpit Commentary describes what it means to be “workers at home.”  “[It means] making home first of all a center of attraction by its order and cleanliness and comfort; then by its harmonies of peace and love, so that no discordant notes may mar the music of its joy; and then by… securing the safety of economy and the honor of a wife who weaves all into beauty and order at home.”

Elizabeth George “To be a homemaker means to be a stayer-at-home, to be domestically inclined, a good housekeeper, and a keeper at home (drawing from Strong’s Concordance).” A Woman After God’s Own Heart, 162

Donald Guthrie (Tyndale NT Commentaries, The Pastoral Epistles) “A woman’s primary sphere of activity and contribution is the home.”

Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown write, “We are to be active in or busy with household duties.”

Curtis Vaughn, in The NT From 26 Translations, says it means the wife is to be a “home lover.”

Martin Luther “The greatest blessing… is to have a wife to whom you may entrust your affairs.”

In Experiencing Spiritual Breakthroughs, Bruce Wilkinson writes that it is okay for the wife to work outside the home, but with clear conditions:

• Her husband must be her first priority and receive the best of her energies and attention.
• Her children must be her next priority, and she must be the primary worker in her home.
• Her every other venture (and there may be many) should launch from her position of power and record of accomplishment at home.”
• He adds, “Make sure you, your husband, and your family are not losing out on all the possibilities that God has in mind for you.”