5:6a

But she who lives for pleasure: Paul contrasted a “widow who is truly in need,” whom the believers should help, with the one who lives for pleasure. A widow who lives for pleasure thinks only about what she wants and not about what God wants. She will do whatever causes her to feel good even if she sins by doing it.

5:6b

is dead: A widow who lives for pleasure is obviously alive physically. Therefore when Paul said that she is dead, he meant that she was spiritually dead. That means that she has no real relationship with God.

Speakers of some languages may not use the word dead in this metaphorical way. Therefore they may find it very difficult to understand. If this is true in your area, you may need to say something like:

she lives cut off from God
-or-
her life counts for nothing good

In some languages people may be able to translate this as a simile and to say:

her soul is like a corpse
-or-
her heart is like it is dead, even though her body is alive

© 2003 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.