Epistle is addressed to men who are able to understand the Apostle’s knowledge of the mystery of Christ; in other words, to those to whom he had announced more fully than to others the counsel-.of God. The Ephesian Epistle may have been an encyclical letter, but it was addressed principally to the Ephesians as the representatives of the leading Church of the province of Asia. See amongst recent writers Gore, Ephesians, pp. 42, 43; and Lock, “' Ephesians,” Hastings’ B.D., p. 718.—tpiv: emphati- cally at the end, W.H.; this revelation had been made to the presbyters before him, and the responsibility would rest with them of communicating it to others when their spiritual father had left them.
25---20.
διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος.
55
20. ἐγὼ γὰρ οἶδα τοῦτο, ὅτι εἰσελεύσονται
μετὰ τὴν ἄφιξίν µου λύκοι βαρεῖς eis ὑμᾶς, μὴ Φειδόµενοι τοῦ
Ver. 28. προσέχετε . . . ἑαυτοῖς (cf. 1 Tim. iv. 16), Luke xvii. 3, xxi. 34, Acts ν. 35, viii. 6. In LXX with ἐμαυτῷ, Gen. xxiv. 6, Exod. x. 28, Deut. iv. ο. “Non tantum jubet eos gregi attendere, sed primum sibi ipsis ; neque enim aliorum salutem sedulo unquam curabit, qui suam negliget . . . cum sit ipse pars gregis,” Calvin, in loco, and also Chrys. (Bethge, Ρ. 144).—motpvi@: the figure was com- mon in the O.T. and it is found in St. Luke, xii. 32, in St. John, in St. Peter, but it is said that St. Paul does not use it, cf. however Ephes. iv. 11, where, and nowhere else, he writes καὶ αὐτὸς ἔδωκε ... τοὺς δὲ ποιµένας.---ἐν ᾧ: “in the which,” R.V., not ‘over which”.—tpas is again emphatic, but the presbyters were still part of the flock, see Calvin, u. 5.---ἔθετο, cf. 1 Cor. xij. 28, 1 Tim. i. 12, 11. 7, 2 Tim. i. 11. There is no ground whatever for supposing that the ἐπισκό- aro. here mentioned were not ordained, as the words τὸ Π. τὸ "Αγ. ἔθετο may be used without any reference whatever to the actual mode of appointment. Dr. Hort allows that here the precedent of vi. 3-6 may have been followed, and the appointment of the elders may have been sealed, so to speak, by the Apostle’s prayers and laying-on-of-hands, Ecclesia, pp. 99, 100. The thought of appoint- ment by the Holy Spirit, although not excluding the ordination of Apostles, may well be emphasised here for the sake of solemnly reminding the Presby- ters of their responsibility to a divine Person, and that they stand in danger of losing the divine gifts imparted to them in so far as they are unfaithful to their office.—oipatveryv: “to tend” as dis- tinct from βόσκειν “ to feed,” although the act of feeding as well as of governing is associated also with the former word; see on John xxi. 16. The figurative pastoral language in this passage was probably not unknown as applied to Jewish elders, Edersheim, Fewish Social Life, p. 282; Hort, Ecclesia, p. tor.— ἐπισκόπους: the word, which occurs five times in the N.T., is applied four times to officers of the Christian Church: in this passage, again at Ephesus in 1 Tim. iii. 2, at Philippi in Phil. i. 1, at Crete in Titus i, 7; and once to our Lord Him- self, 1 Peter ii. 25 (cf. the significant passage, Wisdom i. 6, where it is applied to God). In the LXX it is used in various senses, ¢.g., of the overseers of
Josiah, 2 Chron, xxxiv. 12, 17; of task- masters or exactors, Isa. Ix. 17; of minor officers, Neh. xi. @, 14; of officers over the house of the Lord, 2 Kings xi. 18; and in 1 Macc, i. 51 of overseers or local commissioners of Antiochus Epiphanes to enforce idolatry, cf. Jos., Ant., xii., 5, 4. In classical Greek the word is also used with varied associations. Thus in Attic Greek it was used of a commis- sioner sent to regulate a new colony or subject city like a Spartan ‘ harmost,”’ cf. Arist., Av., 1032, and Boeckh, Jnscr., 73 (in the Roman period ἐπίμεληταί); but it was by no means confined to Attic usage. In another inscription found at Thera in the Macedonian period men- tion is made of two ἐπίσκοποι receiving money and putting it out at interest, and again at Rhodes, in the second cen- tury B.c., ἐπίσ. are mentioned in inscrip- tions, but we do not know their functions, although Deissmann claims that in one inscription, J. M. A. ε., 731, the title is used of a sacred office in the Temple of Apollo, but he declines to commit him- self to any statement as to the duties of the office: cf. also Loening, Die Gemein- deverfassung des Urchristenthums, pp. 21, 22; Gibson, ‘‘ Bishop,” B.D.?; Gwatkin, ‘‘ Bishop,” Hastings’ B.D. ; Deissmann, Neue Bibelstudien, p. 57; Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 95. M. Waddington has collected several instances of the title in inscriptions found in the Haurdn, 2.6., the south-eastern district of the ancient Bashan (see the references to Le Bas-Waddington in Loening, w. s., Ρ. 22, note, and Gore, Church and the Ministry, p. 402), but none of these give us precise and definite information as to the functions of the ἐπίσκοποι. But it is important to note that M. Waddington is of opinion that the comparative fre- quency of the title in the Haurdn points to the derivation of the Christian use of the word from Syria or Palestine rather than from the organisation of the Greek municipality (Expositor, p. 99, 1887). It has been urged that the officers of administration and finance in the con- temporary non-Christian associations, the clubs and guilds so common in the Roman empire, were chiefly known by one or other of two names, ἐπιμελητής or ἐπίσκοπος, Hatch, B.L., p. 36, and hence the inference has been drawn that the primary function of the primitive ἐπίσκοποι in the Christian Church was