21---22.
they can drop the article, etc. (cf. Win.- Moult., p. 138, and especially Buttm., Gram. of N. T. Greek, pp. 119, 120; Blass, Gram. of N. T. Greek, pp. 161, 162). The present instance does not come within the scope of these excep- tions. It is not like πᾶς οἶκος Ἰσραήλ (Acts ii. 36), nor is it really analogous even to such cases as the πᾶσα γῆ of Thucyd., Π., 43, or the πᾶσα ἐπιστολή of Ignat., Eph., 12. Hence the ren- dering here must be ‘‘every building”’ or “every several building’”’. The pre- sent participle cuvappodoyoupévy (the verb occurs in the NT only here and in iv. 16, and corresponds to the classical συναρμόζειν) describes the joining to- gether as a process now going on. The pres. αὔξει (a form occurring in the NT only here and in Col. ii. 19, but common in Soph., Thucyd., Pind., etc.) in like manner expresses what is happening now, or, it may be, what is normal. The phrase vaov ἅγιον is sufficiently ren- dered ‘a holy temple” or “sanctuary”’. Some (e.g., Mey.), supposing that Paul has the Jewish temple in view and means to say that the Christian Church is now the true Temple of God, the house made His own sanctuary by His dwelling in it, would render it ‘‘the holy temple”. The ἐν Κυρίῳ is connected by some (Harl., etc.) immediately with ἅγιον, = a temple that is holy as being in the Lord; by others with ναὸν ἅγιον (Ell.); by others with αὔξει (Mey.). But it really qualifies the whole statement of the joining and growing. ΑΙ this is in the Lord, 2.6., in Christ, as both the context and the general NT application of Κύριος show. The sense of the whole, therefore, is this—in Christ the Lord every several building that goes to make up the ideal Temple of God, every Christian com- munity, the one now addressed not less than others, is at present being surely framed and fitted together, and is grow- ing and harmoniously developing so that it may form part of the great mystical Body of Christ, the vast spiritual fellow- ship of believers which is God’s true Temple.
Ver, 22, ἐν ᾧ καὶ ὑμεῖς συνοικοδο- μεῖσϑε εἰς κατοικητήριον τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν πνεύματι : in whom ye also are being built together into a habitation of God in the Spirit, The relative refers again, as in ver. 21, to Christ, the Κυρίῳ just named, not to the ναόν. The καί (= also, not even) points to the dignity of the present position—“ the exalted nature of the association in which the Ephesians shared ” (Ell.). The συνοικοδομεῖσθε is