οἰκουργός

From the study of Titus 2:5

Range of meaning

'Working in the house'; a diligent household worker or manager. It is extremely rare. This verse is among its earliest attestations, and the medical writer Soranus (2nd c. AD) uses a related form. The variant oikouros, by contrast, is common in classical Greek: 'house-keeper, house-guard, one who stays at home', and it is a standard term of praise for a respectable wife.

Against the English

KJV 'keepers at home' and YLT 'keepers of [their own] houses' translate the later reading oikourous. BSB 'managers of their households', WEB 'workers at home', and ESV/NASB 'working/workers at home' follow the earlier oikourgous. NIV 'busy at home' catches the active sense well.

How it drifted

Since the KJV, 'keepers at home' has often been heard as 'homebound' or 'never leaving the house'. Even the classical oikouros meant guarding and managing the house rather than confinement, and the better-attested oikourgos stresses active work.

Used elsewhere in the period

Plutarch (Conjugal Precepts, Moralia 142D) describes Phidias' statue of Aphrodite with one foot on a tortoise as a symbol of a wife's oikouria (keeping the house) and silence. Philo (Special Laws 3.169–171) assigns women the indoor household sphere. A Roman epitaph for a woman named Claudia praises her: domum servavit, lanam fecit, 'she kept the house, she worked the wool'. Metzger's Textual Commentary explains that copyists probably replaced the rare oikourgos with the familiar oikouros.