Ephesians 1:9

1:9 He did this when he revealed ¹  to us the secret ²  of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth ³  in Christ, ⁴ 

Ephesians 2:5

2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! ⁵  –

Ephesians 3:4

3:4 When reading this, ⁶  you will be able to ⁷  understand my insight into this secret ⁸  of Christ.

Ephesians 4:8

4:8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he captured ⁹  captives; he gave gifts to men.” ¹⁰ 

Ephesians 4:31

4:31 You must put away every kind of bitterness, anger, wrath, quarreling, and evil, slanderous talk.

Ephesians 5:19

5:19 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music ¹¹  in ¹²  your hearts to the Lord,

Ephesians 6:17

6:17 And take the helmet of salvation ¹³  and the sword ¹⁴  of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

[1:9]  ¹ tn Or “He did this by revealing”; Grk “making known, revealing.” Verse 9 begins with a participle dependent on “lavished” in v. 8; the adverbial participle could be understood as temporal (“when he revealed”), which would be contemporaneous to the action of the finite verb “lavished,” or as means (“by revealing”). The participle has been translated here with the temporal nuance to allow for means to also be a possible interpretation. If the translation focused instead upon means, the temporal nuance would be lost as the time frame for the action of the participle would become indistinct.

[1:9]  ² tn Or “mystery.” In the NT μυστήριον (musthrion) refers to a divine secret previously undisclosed.

[1:9]  ³ tn Or “purposed,” “publicly displayed.” Cf. Rom 3:25.

[1:9]  ⁴ tn Grk “in him”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[2:5]  ⁵ tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).

[3:4]  ⁹ tn Grk “which, when reading.”

[3:4]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “you are able to.”

[3:4]  ¹¹ tn Or “mystery.”

[4:8]  ¹³ tn Grk “he led captive captivity.”

[4:8]  ¹⁴ sn A quotation which is perhaps ultimately derived from Ps 68:18. However, the wording here differs from that of Ps 68 in both the Hebrew text and the LXX in a few places, the most significant of which is reading “gave gifts to” in place of “received gifts from” as in HT and LXX. It has sometimes been suggested that the author of Ephesians modified the text he was citing in order to better support what he wanted to say here. Such modifications are sometimes found in rabbinic exegesis from this and later periods, but it is also possible that the author was simply citing a variant of Ps 68 known to him but which has not survived outside its quotation here (W. H. Harris, The Descent of Christ [AGJU 32], 104). Another possibility is that the words here, which strongly resemble Ps 68:19 HT and LXX (68:18 ET), are actually part of an early Christian hymn quoted by the author.

[5:19]  ¹⁷ tn See BDAG 1096 s.v. ψάλλω.

[5:19]  ¹⁸ tn Or “with.”

[6:17]  ²¹ sn An allusion to Isa 59:17.

[6:17]  ²² sn The Greek term translated sword (μάχαιρα, macaira) refers to the Roman gladius, a short sword about 2 ft (60 cm) long, used for close hand-to-hand combat. This is the only clearly offensive weapon in the list of armor mentioned by the author (he does not, for example, mention the lance [Latin pilum]).