Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Ephesians 5:33 - 5:33
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Eph_5:33. Πλήν ] is usually explained to the effect, that it leads back to the proper theme after the digression of Eph_5:30-32, or merely Eph_5:32 (Olshausen). “Paulus prae nobilitate digressionis quasi oblitus propositae rei nunc ad rem revertitur,” Bengel. A digression, however, has certainly not taken place, but Eph_5:30-31 essentially belong to the description of the love of Christ to the church, and Eph_5:32 was a brief gloss pertaining to the right understanding of Eph_5:31, and not a digression. And πλήν is used by way doubtless of breaking off (Luk_19:27, al.), but not of resuming. So also here: Yet—not further to enter upon the subject of this μυστήριον —ye also ought (as Christ the church), each one individually, in such manner ( οὕτως , i.e. in keeping with the ideal of Christ contained in this μυστήριον ) to love his own wife as himself. With καί the persons appealed to, and with οὕτως the mode of what they are to do, are placed in a parallel with Christ.
οἱ καθʼ ἕνα ] ye one by one, vos singuli, man by man. See Matthiae, p. 1357. The following verb, however, has taken its regimen from ἕκαστος , not from the proper subject ἡμεῖς , as often also in classical writers. See Matthiae, p. 765; Stallbaum, ad Gorg. p. 503 E; Bornemann, ad Cyrop. iii. 1. 8.
The twofold designation οἱ καθʼ ἕνα ἕκαστος strengthens the conception, that each one without exception, etc.
ὡς ἑαυτόν ] as himself, so that the love issues from, and is determined by, the point of view: ὁ ἀγαπῶν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα ἑαυτὸν ἀγαπᾷ , Eph_5:28.
ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἵνα φοβῆται τὸν ἄνδρα ] ἡ δὲ γυνή is with emphasis absolutely (Winer, p. 506 [E. T. 722]) prefixed, not yet dependent on the notion of volo (see on 2Co_8:7) to be supplied in thought before ἵνα . Hence: but the wife—she ought to fear her husband. In this brief stern closing utterance, the apostle, while stating the obligation of the husband to love the wife ὡς ἑαυτόν , yet secures as concerns the wife the relation of subordination, namely, the duty of reverence for the husband—a duty, which is not done away with by that obligation on the part of the husband. “Optime cohaerebit concordia, si utrimque constabunt officia,” Erasmus, Paraphr. Rightly, we may add, in accordance with the context Oecumenius defines the notion of φοβῆται : ὡς πρέπει γυναῖκα φοβεῖσθαι , μὴ δουλοπρεπῶς . See Eph_5:22-24.