1 Timothy 5:3–16

³Honour widows who are really widows; ⁴and if any widow have children or grandchildren, let them learn first to their own house to show piety, and to give back a recompense to the parents, for this is right and acceptable before God. ⁵And she who is really a widow and desolate, hath hoped upon God, and doth remain in the supplications and in the prayers night and day, ⁶and she who is given to luxury, living—hath died; ⁷and these things charge, that they may be blameless; ⁸and if any one for his own—and especially for those of the household—doth not provide, the faith he hath denied, and than an unbeliever he is worse. ⁹A widow—let her not be enrolled under sixty years of age, having been a wife of one husband, ¹⁰in good works being testified to: if she brought up children, if she entertained strangers, if saints’ feet she washed, if those in tribulation she relieved, if every good work she followed after; ¹¹and younger widows be refusing, for when they may revel against the Christ, they wish to marry, ¹²having judgment, because the first faith they did cast away, ¹³and at the same time also, they learn to be idle, going about the houses; and not only idle, but also tattlers and busybodies, speaking the things they ought not; ¹⁴I wish, therefore, younger ones to marry, to bear children, to be mistress of the house, to give no occasion to the opposer to reviling; ¹⁵for already certain did turn aside after the Adversary. ¹⁶If any believing man or believing woman have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the assembly be burdened, that those really widows it may relieve.