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Eph_5:6. Let no one deceive you with empty words! In those against whom the warning is here given, Grotius sees partly heathen philosophers, partly Jews, which last “omnibus Judaizantibus, quomodocunque vixissent, partem fore dicebant in seculo altera;” Olshausen (comp. Bleek) thinks of frivolous Christians of antinomian sentiments, who would in future emerge; Meier, of teachers of Gentile tendencies. In accordance with the context ( ἐπὶ τοὺς υἱοὺς τῆς ἀπειθείας , συμμέτοχοι αὐτῶν , ἦτε γάρ ποτε σκότος ) we have to understand Gentiles who have remained unbelieving, who in their intercourse with the Christians sought to palliate those Gentile vices, to give them out as matters of indifference, to represent abstaining from the same as groundless rigour, and thereby to entice back the Christians to the Gentile life. Their discourses were κένοι , inasmuch as the corresponding contents, i.e. the truth, was wanting to them. Comp. Col_2:8; LXX. Exo_5:9, al.; Plat. Lach. p. 196 B; Dem. 821, 11; Hom. Od. xxii. 249, and the passages in Kypke, II. p. 299 f.; also κενολογία , empty talk, Plut. Mor. p. 1069 C; κενολογεῖν , Isa_8:19.
διὰ ταῦτα γὰρ κ . τ . λ .] for certainly very serious consequences follow these vices: on account of these vices ( διὰ ταῦτα emphatically prefixed) comes (down) the wrath of God upon the disobedient, for this vicious conduct piles up the load of guilt one day to receive punishment (Rom_2:5), from which they could be liberated only by means of faith in Christ, the despising of whom leaves them to abide under the wrath of God and to encounter the judicial execution of it. To refer ταῦτα to the deceiving with empty words (Chrysostom places both explanations side by side; comp. Theophylact and Oecumenius), has against it not so much the plural—since ταῦτα often also in classical writers denotes (see Winer, p. 146 [E. T. 201]) one notion or thought (according to the aggregate of its several marks)—as rather the unsuitability of the sense in itself and to the following μὴ οὖν γίνεσθε κ . τ . λ . as well as to the parallel Col_3:6.
ἡ ὀργὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ ] Not the punishment of the present life is meant (Calvin, Meier, and others; Matthies combines present and future), since the ὀργὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ is the opposite of the βασιλεία , Eph_5:5; but the wrath of God in the day of judgment, which future, as in Eph_5:5, is realized as present. Comp. 1Th_1:10.
The υἱοὶ τῆς ἀπειθ . are here those refusing faith to the gospel, and thereby disobedient to God. It is otherwise Eph_2:2. Comp. Rom_11:30; Rom_15:31.