Itching ears

Paul describes the future that Timothy will face, where people would not endure sound doctrine, and instead heap to themselves teachers in order to satisfy their itching ears. Albert Barnes writes on this subject:

The apostle here says, that by turning away from Timothy, and from sound instruction, they would not abandon all religious teachers, but would rather increase and multiply them.^[4]

Paul warns Timothy about a future apostasy in which the lusts of people would drive them away from Apostolic teaching, which Timothy belonged to. Charles Ellicott suggests a motive for doing so:

These worldly ones to whom St. Paul referred, reluctant to part with the hope Christianity taught, and unwilling to live the life which St. Paul and Timothy insisted upon as necessary to be lived by all those who would share in that glorious hope, sought out for themselves more indulgent teachers, who would flatter and gratify their hearers with novelties in doctrine, and would, at the same time, lay comparatively little stress on the pure and saintly life.^[3]

Paul uses the analogy of having an itching ear to show that pupils, not the teachers are the ones seeking doctrine aside from Apostolic teaching.^[5] Matthew Poole describes the cause and effect of an itching ear:

their ears itch, and they must have those that will scratch them. The disease of lust in their souls brings forth an itch in their ears, that they will have a mind to hear only such as will by scratching please them.^[6]

In chapter 4 verse 4, Paul writes:

2 Timothy 4:4: And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (KJV)

Paul uses the word fables (μύθους) to describe the remedy that people seek in order to scratch their itching ears.

However, Paul continues to fulfill the analogy in chapter 4 verse 5 by contrasting Timothy's ministry from these fables. Paul calls Timothy to do the work of an evangelist by winning back those who sought fables, through preaching "the great facts of the Gospel placed side by side with the fables of the false teachers."^[3]