After dealing with the problem of the younger widows, Paul now returns to the subject of caring for real widows. This verse goes back to the ideas mentioned in verses 4 and 8, except that it now focuses on the female members of the family. Any believing woman translates the feminine form of the word “faithful” or “believing,” hence a woman who has put her trust in Jesus Christ; so Good News Translation “any Christian woman.” As the UBS Greek New Testament shows, there is a textual problem here. In addition to the adopted reading in the text, there are two other readings, namely, “any believing man” and “any believing man or woman.” While there is a considerable degree of doubt over which is the best reading, it seems that from the evidence believing woman is to be preferred, and many modern translations have opted for this textual reading. It is of course logical for women to be in charge of the care of other women in their own household.

Relatives who are widows is literally widows, but the context clearly shows that these would be widows within the Christian woman’s household, and this information has been made explicit in Revised Standard Version (compare Good News Translation “widows in her family”).

Assist is the same verb used in verse 10 (there translated “relieved”), for which see discussion there.

The purpose of providing the needs of widowed members of the family is to relieve the church of the burden of supporting these widows and enable it to support widows who are really in need. In many languages let the church not be burdened will be translated as “not cause the other Christians to be burdened,” or in languages that do not use the passive voice, “not cause the other Christians to have to bear this obligation,” or “This will mean that the other Christians won’t have to bear that burden.” Burdened translates the imperative mood of a verb that means “to be burdened,” that is, to be troubled and loaded by burdensome obligations. The imperative mood can here be rendered as a command; many translations choose to depict this part of the verse as a result of the previous part; that is, supporting widowed relatives results in not putting additional burdens on the church and enabling the church to support widows who otherwise would not have any other source of support. For real widows see 1 Tim. 5.3.

Quoted with permission from Arichea, Daniel C. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to Timothy. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1995. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .