The Use of the Aorist Imperative in the Pastoral Epistles 87 3.3. Titus Titus uses a mere fourteen imperatives, only three of which are aorist. Furthermore, the aorist imperatives parallel those in the last chapter of 2 Tim. Thus in Titus 3,12 Paul once again uses the aorist imperative of σπουδάζω with the aorist infinitive ἐλθεῖν. In 3,15, just as in 2 Tim 4,19, Paul uses the aorist imperative for ἀσπάζομαι. At this point one could even suggest that certain verbs might, in general, have naturally taken a certain tense in the imperative (i.e. perhaps verbs of greeting always occur in a certain tense in the imperative mood)58. In 3,13, Paul urges Titus to send (aorist) Zenas the lawyer to him. Here, perhaps, is a much more clear instance where the present would have been inappropriate, not because the aorist refers to a “once-for-all” kind of action59, but rather because the concept of sending somebody might (in Greek at least), be somewhat awkward in the imperative mood if expressed with a present imperative60. The point, then, has been simply to demonstrate how careful one should be in mining exegetical gold nuggets from the use of the tenses. Having surveyed the aorist imperatives in the Pastorals, we can now attempt to draw some conclusions concerning their significance. 4. Understanding the Aorist Imperative One thing, at least, is certain from the above study: the difference between the aorist and present imperative threatens to defy any attempts at simple classification. Indeed, it is difficult to come to any solid rules regarding the different tenses in the imperative mood. At the least, 58 Which, of course, would be in keeping with Baugh’s view in “Introduction to Greek Tense Form Choice.” See also Thorley, “Aktionsart in New Testament Greek” 305-306, who discusses verbs where “lexical usage” or “syntactical usage” might dictate the tense, along with the fact that verbs of motion seem to prefer the present imperative over the aorist. He contrasts these with “free” verbs (“i.e. where the author has an open choice of aorist or present imperative without any of the above constraints”). Unfortunately it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss that issue more thoroughly. 59 D. A. Black, It’s Still Greek to Me (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1998) 97, bluntly states that the aoristic aspect “never means ‘once and for all’, no matter who tells you that it does.” This writer is inclined to agree. 60 This writer personally searched (via Accordance) both the NT and the LXX but could not find any occurrences of either πέμπω or προπέμπω in the present imperative, although both did occur in the present tense (though surprisingly, both words appear far less than one would expect).