What Vessel?

"For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God..." (I Thess. 4: 3-5)

Recently I had a discussion with another on whether the "vessel" mentioned in this passage should be interpreted to mean "wife" or "body." Clearly, it cannot mean "wife," as Barnes noted in his commentary. To make the word "vessel" to refer to a wife would restrict the exhortation to only married men in the assembly of the Thessalonians, but Paul says "each one of you," whether married women, or single men and women.

Barnes Notes

Verse 4. That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel. The word vessel here (\~skeuov\~) probably refers to the body. When it is so used, it is either because the body is frail and feeble, like an earthen vessel, easily broken 2 Corinthians 4:7, or because it is that which contains the soul, or in which the soul is lodged. Lucret. Lib. iii. 441. The word vessel also, (Heb. \^HEBREW\^ Gr. \~skeuov\~,) was used by the later Hebrews to denote a wife, as the vessel of her husband Schcoettg. Hor. Heb. p. 827. Comp. Wetstein in loc. Many, as Augustine, Wetstein, Scheettgen, Koppe, Robinson (Lex.), and others, have supposed that this is the reference here. Comp. 1 Peter 3:7. The word body, however, accords more naturally with the usual signification of the word, and as the apostle was giving directions to the whole church, embracing both sexes, it is hardly probable that he confined his direction to those who had wives. It was the duty of females; and of the unmarried among the males, as well as of married men, to observe this command. The injunction then is, that we should preserve the body pure. See Barnes "1 Corinthians 6:18-20". (emphasis mine)