"Handling aright the word of truth," or "Rightly dividing the word of truth." There is some doubt here also as to the explanation of the word rendered "handling aright" or "rightly dividing" (ὀρθοτομεῖν). Once more we have a word which occurs nowhere else in New Testament. Its radical meaning is to "cut aright" or "cut straight," especially of driving a straight road through a district, or a straight furrow across a field. In the LXX. it is twice used of making straight or directing a person's path. "In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths;" and "The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way" (Prov. iii. 6; xi. 5). The idea of rightness seems to be the dominant one; that of cutting quite secondary; so that the Revisers are quite justified in following the example of the Vulgate (_recte tractantem_), and translating simply "rightly handling." But this right handling may be understood as consisting in seeing that the word of truth moves in the right direction and progresses in the congregation by a legitimate development. The word, therefore, excludes all fanciful and perilous deviations and evasions, such as those in which the false teachers indulged, and all those "strivings about words," which distract men's minds and divert them from the substance of the Gospel. It may be doubted whether the word contains any idea of _distribution_, as that the word of truth is to be preached according to the capacity of the hearers,--strong meat to the strong, and milk to those who are still but babes in the faith. We may feel sure that the expression has nothing to do with the cutting up of victims in sacrifices, or with cutting straight to the heart of a thing, as if the word of truth had a kernel which must be reached by cleaving it down the middle. Yet both these explanations have been suggested. Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius use the substantive derived from St. Paul's verb (ὀρθοτομία) in the sense of orthodoxy; which seems to imply that they understood the verb in the sense of handling aright (_Strom._, VII. xvi.; _H. E._, IV. iii.).
Once more (1 Tim. vi. 20) the Apostle warns his disciple against "profane babblings." He is (according to St. Paul's graphic word) to make a circuit in order to avoid such things, to "give them a wide berth" (περιίστασο; comp. Tit. iii. 9). These empty profanities, with their philosophic pretentiousness, had done much harm already, and would do still more; for the men who propagate them would certainly go still greater lengths in impiety; and they must receive no encouragement. Their teaching is of a kind that will spread rapidly, and it is deadly in its effects. It "will eat as doth a gangrene."