1 Timothy 2:9 · Symbol · Modesty and Simplicity
The Words Kosmios and Haplous
Kosmios and haplous are the two Greek adjectives behind the outward and the inward sides of modesty in the New Testament.
Paul takes the verb for adorning and the adjective for an orderly bearing in 1 Timothy 2:9 from one root.
Likewise, I want the women to adorn themselves with respectable apparel, with modesty, and with self-control, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes,
- The word
- κόσμιος (kósmios), G2887
- First appears
- 1 Timothy 2:9 “Likewise, I want the women to adorn themselves…”
Summary
Kosmios describes a bearing that is orderly and fitting, in what a person wears and in how he lives. Haplous describes an eye that is single and sound, a heart with one aim. Two more words of 1 Timothy 2:9, aidōs and sōphrosynē, name the shame that holds a person back and the self-government that rules him from within.
- Paul uses kosmios of the women's apparel in 1 Timothy 2:9 and of the overseer in 1 Timothy 3:2.
- The English word modesty renders two Greek words, aidōs in 1 Timothy 2:9 and euschēmosynē, decorum, in 1 Corinthians 12:23.
- Kosmos, the noun of the same family, means adornment in 1 Peter 3:3 and the world in most of its other verses.
- Haplous belongs to the family of haplotēs, the word Paul uses for sincerity and for generous giving.
Two Words for One Value
Paul and Jesus each supply one of the two words.
Modesty is the value of a life kept plain and fitting before God and before others, and the New Testament names it with a handful of Greek words.
The question is what each word means in the verses where it stands, and how far its root can be trusted to explain it. The answer comes from the tagged Greek text and the STEP Bible lexicon, and from the neighbour words of 1 Timothy 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:3. Richard Chenevix Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament and the King James renderings that Strong's dictionary records add the history of the words.
Where the Words Stand
Each of the two words has neighbours in its verse and kin in its family.
Kosmios and haplous are rare words, while kosmos, the noun beside kosmios, is one of the commonest words of the New Testament.
| Word | Sense in the STEP Bible lexicon | Uses | A verse where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|
| The two words | |||
| kosmios, κόσμιος, G2887 | orderly, i.e. decorous; respectable | 2 | “with respectable apparel” (1 Timothy 2:9) |
| haplous, ἁπλοῦς, G573 | properly, folded together, i.e. single (figuratively, clear); sound | 2 | “eyes are good” (Luke 11:34) |
| Their neighbours in 1 Timothy 2:9 | |||
| aidōs, αἰδώς, G127 | bashfulness, i.e. (towards men), modesty or (towards God) awe | 1 | “with modesty” (1 Timothy 2:9) |
| sōphrosynē, σωφροσύνη, G4997 | soundness of mind, i.e. (literally) sanity or (figuratively) self-control | 3 | “words of truth and sobriety” (Acts 26:25) |
| kosmeō, κοσμέω, G2885 | to put in proper order, i.e. decorate; to arrange | 10 | “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2) |
| The other words of their families | |||
| kosmos, κόσμος, G2889 | orderly arrangement, i.e. decoration; world | 185 | “outward adornment” (1 Peter 3:3) |
| haplotēs, ἁπλότης, G572 | singleness, i.e. sincerity, or generosity | 8 | “your simple and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3) |
| haplōs, ἁπλῶς, G574 | bountifully; without reserve | 1 | “who gives generously to all” (James 1:5) |
kosmeō, κοσμέω, G2885, The other words of their families, kosmos, κόσμος, G2889, haplotēs, ἁπλότης, G572, haplōs, ἁπλῶς, G574
The uses are those of the tagged Greek text of the New Testament, and a printed concordance may differ by a few.
Kosmios in 1 Timothy 2:9 and 1 Timothy 3:2
The two verses show the word's grammar and the company it keeps.
The Greek of 1 Timothy 2:9 reads en katastolē kosmiō, in apparel respectable, and a few words later kosmein heautas, adorning themselves. The tagged text parses kosmiō as an adjective agreeing with katastolē, the feminine noun for apparel, and kosmein as a present infinitive.
An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,Paul lists the word among the marks of the man who oversees a church, so it describes a man's conduct as well as a woman's dress.
In the list of 1 Timothy 3:2 it stands beside sōphrōn, self-controlled, the adjective of the sōphrosynē of 1 Timothy 2:9.
The Kosmos Family, Order and Adornment
Kosmeō and kosmos range in use from putting in order to adorning.
The verb kosmeō stands where the virgins trim their lamps (Matthew 25:7) and where the temple is adorned with beautiful stones (Luke 21:5).
not stealing from them, but showing all good faith, so that in every respect they will adorn the teaching about God our Savior.The verb here describes conduct, so the adornment Paul asks for can be a way of life as much as a garment.
Abbott-Smith's lexicon, as the STEP Bible prints it, places the noun kosmos of 1 Peter 3:3 under the sense "ornament, adornment", where Peter names braided hair, gold and fine clothes. The same entry goes on to the world as an ordered system and to the earth.
The root and the sense of a worda caution for word study
English readers may hear cosmetic in kosmios and the universe in kosmos. A word's sense is set by the verse it stands in, and its root does not carry the sense of one verse into another.
Aidōs and Sōphrosynē, Shame and Self-Government
Paul names two inward qualities beside the respectable apparel, and Trench drew the line between them.
Between the adjective and the verb, the Greek of 1 Timothy 2:9 sets meta aidous kai sōphrosynēs, with modesty and with self-control.
Richard Chenevix Trench, in Synonyms of the New Testament (1871 edition, section 20), describes aidōs as the shame that "shrinks from overpassing the limits of womanly reserve and modesty". He calls sōphrosynē "that habitual inner self-government, with its constant rein on all the passions and desires".
In section 19 Trench set aidōs beside aischunē, the other Greek word for shame, and wrote that aidōs "would always restrain a good man from an unworthy act".
Strong's dictionary (1890) lists the King James renderings of kosmios as of good behaviour and modest, and of aidōs as reverence and shamefacedness. Trench held that the translators of 1611 wrote shamefastness, a word formed like steadfastness, for what is "established and made fast by (an honourable) shame".
He judged the later printing shamefacedness a corruption, since the change was "to allow all the meaning and force of the word to run to the surface, to leave us ethically a far inferior word".
and the parts we consider less honorable, we treat with greater honor. And our unpresentable parts are treated with special modesty,Paul's decorum here belongs to his picture of the church as a body, so this modesty is a matter of honour among members more than of dress.
Haplous, the Single Eye
The inward word of the value stands in the two Gospel forms of the saying about the eye.
Luke's form of the saying adds the warning “Be careful, then, that the light within you is not darkness” (Luke 11:35).
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.Matthew's form of the saying stands in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus has just spoken of treasure in heaven.
Order Without and Singleness Within
A fitting bearing in dress and conduct grows from a heart with one aim, so the two words belong together in the one value.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The tagged Greek text of the New Testament, with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses (STEP Bible, Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- STEP Bible TBESG, the brief lexicon based on Abbott-Smith (1922), entries g2887, g573, g127, g4997, g2885, g2889, g2689, g572, g574 and g2157 (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, with brief dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek words of the original (1890)
- Richard Chenevix Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871, from the third London edition), sections 19 and 20, pages 101 to 104.
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