q
6---8,
7. μὴ οὖν γίνεσθε “ συμμέτοχοι αὐτῶν.
355
8. “ἦτε γάρ ποτε ® σκότος, ¢ Ch. iii. 6
rs κ ος reff. νῦν δὲ "ds ἐν κυρίῳ: ὡς "τέκνα φωτὸς περιπατεῖτε 9. (6 γὰρ f Rom. vi.
g Acts xxvi. 18; Rom. ii. 29, xiii. 12; 2 Cor. iv. 6 al.
of speech with no reality behind it, or identified simply with certain effects— the workings of conscience, the short- ness and the ills of life, the penalties of the present existence, etc. It is given in Scripture, just as the love, the righteous- ness, the holiness of God are given, as an affectus and not merely an effectus, a quality of the perfect moral nature of God, an attitude and sensibility of the Divine Mind toward εν]. It is exhibited as operating now, but also as looking to fulfil itself completely in the final adjust- ment. Here its future operation in the ultimate awards may be specially in view, but not that alone. Meyer puts it too narrowly when he says it is ‘‘the wrath of God in the day of judgment, which future, as in ver. 5, is realised as present”’. -ἰπὶ τοὺς υἱοὺς τῆς ἀπειθείας : upon the sons of disobedience. For ἀπειθείας WH prefer ἀπειθίας. The phrase has been used already in ii. 2, and there with reference to the unregenerate. Here, again, it describes the persons in respect of their ““ essential and innate disobedi- ence” (ΕΙΙ.). The ἀπειθεία in view is the denial of faith, disobedience to the truth of the Gospel of God, and so to God Himself; see on ii. 2, and cf. Rom. 30. 532) αν 31: heb, iv. Ὁ, Tr.
Ver. 7. μὴ οὖν γίνεσθε συμμέτοχοι αὐτῶν : become not ye then partakers with them. γίνεσθε again=“ do not become,”’ ‘«suffer not yourselves to be’’; not ἐστε, “be not’’. What is meant is a possible falling back into ways by grace forsaken. The participation which is negatived is obviously taking part with the sons of disobedience (αὐτῶν) in their vices, not merely in their punishment or in the ὀργή. The term συμμέτοχος (or συνμέ- τοχος, TWH) occurs only here and in iii. 6above. The οὖν has the force which it has in v. 1, giving the inference to be drawn from the statement of the wrath of God.
Ver. 8. ἦτε γάρ mote oxdtos: for ye were once darkness. A consideration in support of the previous exhortation, viz., the consideration that with them the con- dition in which such sins could be in- dulged was wholly past and gone. The ἦτε is put emphatically first to throw stress on the fact that all that is now behind them, and surely not a condition to which they could revert. No μέν re-
17. h Ch. ii. 3 reff.
quires to be supplied here. Its omission in this clause, while the next has 8é, is nothing strange or irregular, the pév being inserted only “when the first clause is intended to stand in connection with and prepare the reader for the oppo- sition to the second” (EIl.). See Ell. on Gal. ii. 15; Jelf, Greek Gram., p. 765; Donaldson, Greek Gram., pp. 575-578. It has to be remembered also that the cor- relation of those two particles has by no means the position in NT Greek which it has in classical Greek. In point of fact it has little or no place in the Catholic Epistles except 1 Pet. (to some extent), or in 2 Thess., 1 Tim., Tit., Philem., and the Apoc., and is comparatively rare even in the Gospels; cf. Blass, Gram. of ΔΝ. T. Greek, pp. 266, 267. The abstract σκότος, instead of ἐσκοτισμένοι or similar concrete form, adds greatly to the force ot the representation. They were darkness itself,—persons ‘‘in whom darkness be- comes visible and holds sway”? (Thay.- Grimm), so utterly sunk in ignorance of Divine things, so wholly lost in the evils accompanying such ignorance —vov δὲ φῶς ἐν Κυρίῳ: but now ye are light in the Lord. Instead of what they once were they had become enlightened by the Gospel, discerners of Divine truth and subjects of the new life which it opens tomen. The completeness of the change is indicated again by the use of the abstract term—so possessed and penetrated were they by that truth that they could be described not simply as enlightened but as themselves now light. And this “in the Lord,” for it was in virtue of their fellowship with Christ that this new apprehension of things came to them, transforming their lives. —s τέκνα φωτὸς περιπατεῖτε: walk as children of light. The strong abstracts σκότος, φῶς, come in fitly before the exhortation and make it more pointed. The omission of οὖν or any similar par- ticle adds further to the force of the exhortation. If these Ephesians were now ‘‘light in the Lord,” it was not for themselves only but for others. They were Called to live a life beseeming those to whom Christian enlightenment and purity had become their proper nature; cf. Luke xvi. 8; John xii. 36; 1 Thess, v. 5. Nothing is to be made of the absence of the article here in contrast