1 Timothy 5:12-15

J.B. Phillips New Testament

^11-13 3. Don’t put the younger widows on your list. My experience is that when their natural desires grow stronger than their spiritual devotion to Christ they want to marry again, thus proving themselves unfaithful to their first loyalty. Moreover, they get into habits of slackness by being so much in and out of other people’s houses. In fact they easily become worse than lazy, and degenerate into gossips and busybodies with dangerous tongues.

^14-15 4. My advice is that younger widows should, normally, marry again, bear children and run their own households. They should certainly not be the means of lowering the reputation of the church, although some, alas, have already played into the enemy’s hands.