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Col_3:18 to Col_4:1.[164] Instructions for the different portions of the household. Why Paul should have given to the churches such a table of household rules only in this Epistle and in that to the Ephesians (comp. also 1 Tim. and Tit.), must be left wholly undecided (Chrysostom exhausts himself in conjectures). They are not polemical; but possibly, in the presence of a theosophico-ascetic atmosphere, the practical rules of healthy domestic life seemed to him the more seasonable. They do not contain traces of a later development of church-life (Holtzmann). The circumstance that the precepts for the several forms of domestic society uniformly (Col_3:18; Col_3:20; Col_3:22 ff.) begin with the subordinate party, as also at Eph_5:21 ff., is to be regarded as having occurred without any set purpose; the idea of obedience was primarily present to the writer’s mind. If Paul’s aim had been to counteract the abuse of Christian freedom and equality, or in other words, perverse desires for emancipation, he would not have considered so weighty a purpose sufficiently met by the mere mode of arrangement, but would have entered upon the matter itself (in opposition to Huther and de Wette); and this we should have to assume that he would have done also in the event of his having had in view an attitude of resistance on the part of those bound to obedience as the thing most to be feared (in opposition to Hofmann). Just as much might such an attitude be a thing to be feared from the stronger party. Respecting the nominatives in the address, see especially Stallbaum, ad Plat. Symp. p. 172 A.
ὡς ἀνῆκεν ] not the perfect (with present signification), as Huther thinks and Bleek does not disapprove, but the imperfect, which has its logical reference in the ἐν κυρίῳ to be connected with it: as was fitting in the Lord, i.e. as was becoming in the relation of the ἐν Χριστῷ εἶναι (Phm_1:8), as was appropriate to the Christian state, but had not yet been in this way realized. The imperfect (comp. Act_22:22) denotes, therefore, as also in ΧΡῆΝ and ἜΔΕΙ , the incomplete condition, which extends even into the present. See Kühner, II. 1, p. 176 f.; Bernhardy, p. 373. Similarly, Winer, p. 254 [E. T. 338]. Comp. also Buttmann, p. 187 [E. T. 216]. We are not to think of an omission of ἌΝ ; see Kühner, l.c. The connection of ἐν κυρίῳ with ὙΠΌΤΑΣΣΕΣΘΕ (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Estius, Rosenmüller, Hofmann, and others)—in which case Hofmann imparts into Ὡς ἈΝῆΚΕΝ the abstract idea: as was already in itself fitting—is opposed by the position of the words themselves, as well as by the parallel in Col_3:20 : εὐάρεστόν ἐστιν ἐν κυρίῳ .
[164] This domestic code is held by Holtzmann to be an insertion of the interpolator from Eph_5:21 to Eph_6:9. He groundlessly questions the genuineness of the expressions εὐάρεστος , ἀδικεῖν , ἐρεθίζειν , ἰδότης , τὸ δίκαιον , ἁπλότης τῆς καρδίας , and even appeals to the use of ἀνθρωπάρεσκος , ἀνταπόδοσις , and the formula τῷ κυρίῳ Χριστῷ δουλεύειν as direct evidence against its Pauline origin. Might not, however, the word ἀνθρωπάρεσκος have been sufficiently familiar to Paul from the LXX. (Psa_53:5) and otherwise (Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 621), and have been used by him in the two parallel epistles? Is not ἀνταπόδοσις a term in general use since Thucydides? Is not “to serve the Lord Christ” a Pauline idea, and even (comp. Rom_16:18) literal expression? The danger of a petitio principii only too easily steals upon even the cautious and sober critic in such points of detail. He finds what he seeks.