Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
How to possess his vessel - Let every man use his wife for the purpose alone for which God created her, and instituted marriage. The word answers to the Hebrew keli , which, though it signifies vessel in general, has several other meanings. That the rabbins frequently express wife by it, Schoettgen largely proves; and to me it appears very probable that the apostle uses it in that sense here. St. Peter calls the wife the weaker Vessel, I Peter 3:7. Others think that the body is meant, which is the vessel in which the soul dwells. In this sense St. Paul uses it, II Corinthians 4:7 : We have this treasure in earthen Vessels; and in this sense it is used by both Greek and Roman authors. There is a third sense which interpreters have put on the word, which I forbear to name. The general sense is plain; purity and continency are most obviously intended, whether the word be understood as referring to the wife or the husband, as the following verse sufficiently proves.
Other Adam Clarke entries containing 1 Thessalonians 4:4:
Leviticus 6:27
Acts 9:15
1 Peter 3:7
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