Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Ephesians 1:18 - 1:18
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened (πεφωτισμένους τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν)
Rev., eyes of your heart. Lit., being enlightened as to the eyes of your heart; enlightened being joined with you (Eph 1:17) by a somewhat irregular construction: may give unto you being enlightened. For a similar construction see Act 15:22. The phrase eyes of the heart occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Plato has eye of the soul (ψυχῆς, “Sophist,” 254). Ovid, speaking of Pythagoras, says: “With his mind he approached the gods, though far removed in heaven, and what nature denied to human sight, he drew forth with the eyes of his heart” (“Metamorphoses,” xv., 62-64). Heart is not merely the seat of emotion, as in popular usage, but of thought and will. See on Rom 1:21. The particular aspect in which its activity is viewed, perception or cognition, is determined by what follows, “that ye may know,” etc.
Hope of His calling
Hope, not, as sometimes, the thing hoped for, but the sentiment or principle of hope which God's calling inspires.
The riches of the glory of His inheritance
Ellicott remarks that this is a noble accumulation of genitives, “setting forth the inheritance on the side of its glory, and the glory on the side of its riches.” Glory is the essential characteristic of salvation, and this glory is richly abounding. His inheritance: which is His, and His gift.