gengwall

I agree TL. But that conclusion begs two questions. First, why not start immediately with the definate article in vs. 11. Second, what should Timothy do with other couples who might be in the same boat? If we could be certain that there was ONLY this one couple in Ephesus that had this problem, I would say there is no reason to stray into a general prohibition. But I don’t believe we can be certain of that. In fact, I we can’t even be certain that Timothy wrote only about the one couple. Timothy could have said “we have some trouble in a few marriages in the congregation. One such troubled marriage is that of Jhn and Jane Doe, but they are simply emblimatic of several others. Here are Jane and John’s specifics…” I mean, we really don’t know whether or not Timothy wrote anything beyond of his specific couple. But we do know that Paul did not begin his instructions for this problem by clearly identifying a the specific couple.