Child-Bearing

CHILD-BEARING [ISBE]

CHILD-BEARING - child'-bar-ing: Only in 1 Tim 2:15: "She shall be saved through her (m "the") child-bearing" (dia tes teknogonias). The reference is to the calling of woman as wife and mother, as her ordinary lot in life, and to the anxieties, pains and perils of maternity, as the culmination and representation of the penalties woman has incurred because of the Fall (Gen 3:16). "She shall be saved by keeping faithfully and simply to her allotted sphere as wife and mother" (Dummelow). The preposition dia is not used here instrumentally, as though child-bearing were a means of her salvation, but locally, as in 1 Cor 3:15, "saved so as through fire," where life is saved by rushing through the flames. The explanation by reference to the incarnation, with an appeal to Gal 4:4, favored by Ellicott and others, seems very mechanical.

H. E. Jacobs