Ephesians 5:21: A Longer Translation Note

EPHESIANS 5:21: A LONGER TRANSLATION NOTE

STANLEY N.HELTON

Western Christian College

Recently Wayne Waiden sought to clarify the appropriate interpretation of Eph. 5:21 within its larger literary context.1 By reading ύποτασσόμενοι as imperatival, he seeks to establish that verse 21 is "a general principle with examples following." 2 The text, he asserts, should be understood as "Obey whom you are supposed to," "Out of reverence for Christ, be in subordination among yourselves: wives to husbands," or "be(-ing) in subordination among yourselves."3 Yet Waiden's interpretation, defacto, disconnects the participle in Eph. 5:21 from its main verb in verse 18 as well as from the string of participles in verses 19-20. Yet Walden's principal goal is to eliminate mutual submission from the following Haustafeln.* In this response I propose that a reading of

1 Wayne Waiden, "Ephesians 5:21—A Translation Note," ResQ 45.4 (2003): 254; and idem., "Translating Ephesians 5:21" ResQ 47.3 (2005): 179-82.

See the thorough treatment of this text by Kenneth V. Neller, "'Submission' in Eph 5.21-23," in Essays on Women in Earliest Christianity, vol. 1 (ed. Carroll D. Osburn; Joplin: College Press, 1993), 243-60.

2 Waiden cites S. D. F. Salmond, "The Epistle to the Ephesians," The Expositor 's Greek Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 3.364, regarding the uncertainty of the relationship of this clause to its larger literary context. But Salmond is not uncertain himself: "It is best to connect the clause, therefore with what precedes it, and to take it as a fourth coordinate clause, giving yet another way in which the condition of being "filled with the Spirit" should express itself." Salmond sees the clause as expressing "one idea of mutual ύπόταξις, in contrast with pagan self-seeking and self-assertion" (365).

3 S. B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980), 74-76, supports his view. However, Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, WBC 42 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 365, contends, "this does not do enough justice to the force of the verse." Walden's use of the AB's translation ("—22 [e.g.] wives to your husbands...") as support for his reading is curious, as Marcus Barth, Ephesians 4-6, AB (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 610, explains, ""E.g.' communicates exactly what is indicated by the structure of the Greek sentence: the subordination of wives is an example of the same mutual subordination, which is also shown by the husband's love, the children's obedience, the parents' responsibility for their offspring, the slaves' and masters' attitude toward one another."

4 In his second article, Waiden seeks to offer an interpretation in which the "verse

34 RESTORATION QUARTERLY

Ephesians 5:18-6:9, giving appropriate attention to semantics, syntax, literary structure and especially Paul's own rhetorical aims, will not support Walden's attempts to remove mutuality from these texts.

Waiden attributes the (misunderstood) mutuality of Eph. 5:21 to a translation problem involving the reciprocal pronoun αλλήλων. 5 "The confusion," insists Waiden, "is caused by a translation problem"—"a lexical deficiency"6— "primarily in assuming that the so-called 'reciprocal' pronoun is always mutual."7

He blames lexicographers and grammarians for not indicating that this pronoun "simply shows random or distributive activity within the group."8 Yet, as I explain below, the level of reciprocity does not depend on the pronoun but on the semantic limits of the verb and other contextual markers, most notably, prepositions.9

says the opposite of what has usually been made of it" (47.3: 179) "Mutual service," he writes, "is intelligible, as in the case of Jesus himself, who was both Master and servant; the two need not be exclusive. But mutual submission is a different matter" (47.3: 180). Walden's bias also shows in 47.3:180 n. 3, when he writes, "The one area of mutual control for husband and wife, as recognized in 1 Cor 7:4, is the marriage bed."

5 However, there are actually two basic problems to be solved in correctly translating this text. The first is the relationship of the five participles in 5:18-21 to the main verb in v. 18, and the second is the dependence of v. 22, which lacks a verb, on v. 21, which contains the participle that gives the needed verbal element. See Ralph P. Martin, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1991), 67.

6 Waiden, 47.3: 179. 7 "Mutual" and "reciprocal" are synonyms. Waiden seems to be arguing that

randomness or distributive action is not also reciprocal. Reciprocity demands only that alternate members of a group perform the action or activity. Thus I would continue to point out that the semantic range of the verb has a greater impact on the level of mutuality than the pronoun. One of the definitional difficulties is that when we use the word "mutual" we think of activity that is agreed upon through consensus; thus we would not consider battle mutual killing. This difficulty is also present with negative words; e. g., we do not generally think of "hating" as a mutual activity.

8 Waiden, 45/4:254. See, e.g., F. Blass and A. Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans, by Robert Funk (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1961), § 287; Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984 repr. of 1920 original), § 1278; and A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934), 690 and 692-3.

9 Methodologically Walden's approach is suspect. Waiden invents his own grammatical rules based on his evaluation of "Hellenistic concordances" which he does not identify. This would require a much larger sampling of Koine Greek usage than available in the NT, the LXX or Josephus. Furthermore, the author accuses translators of "neglecting the literature" which "attests to non-mutual usages" of αλλήλων. However, the only literature cited by Waiden is Peter O'Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 403, and his previous article] Other methodological problems are created by seeing all issues of punctuation and supposed misinterpretation as arising from a mistranslation of the single word αλλήλων. The problems related to translating this text are more complex than this.

HELTON/EPHESIANS 5:21 : A LONGER TRANSLATION NOTE 35

In his first article Waiden challenges the mutuality of αλλήλων with three examples. The first is Luke 12:1 where a crowd is so large that people are 'trampling one another." While it may be true that the trampling was random and distributed throughout the group, it is also true they were simultaneously—as opposed to randomly or distributi vely—trampling each other; a level of mutuality is present, even though trampling is hardly a shared group activity. Still, people are doing it to each other. Similarly, in Rev 6:4, Walden's third example, the rider of the red horse is given the power "to make men slay one another." Reciprocal or even mutual killing is possible in war.

While neither of the above examples supports Walden's point, his second example (Gal. 5:26) actually negates his own position. It is entirely possible to "envy each other" reciprocally, and thus mutually. There is no way to tell if the pronoun in this case must show "random or distributive activity within the group." Rather the verb "envy" is what gives the impression that reciprocity is somehow restricted. "Envy" hardly seems a mutual activity but it is semantically possible. In the end, none of these examples support Walden's case since he is not actually arguing—in the case of Eph 5:21—that submission is random or distributive within a group but that only certain people are to be submissive.10

In his second article, he creates ex nihilo two grammatical rules to explain the use of αλλήλων based on unnamed "Hellenistic concordances":

1) When only two parties are involved αλλήλων usually expresses mutuality.11

2) When a larger group is envisioned, "reciprocal" often merely points to random or distributive activity within the designated group as appropriate.12

Regarding the proposed grammatical rules, in actual usage αλλήλων does not seem to comply. The word occurs 100 times in the Greek NT. Of these, 47 occurrences are as the object of a preposition (most commonly προς) and as such are not comparable to our text in question.13 Thirteen of the remaining

10 This is clearly asserted when Waiden writes, "parents, for example, are not told to obey their children (6:4)" (47/3:180). Neither are wives told to love their husbands or children commanded not to exasperate their fathers! The mutuality exists within the circumscribed role of each participant; fathers remain fathers and children are still children.

11 However, in each of the examples Waiden cites for this point, Luke 23:12 and 1 John 1:7, αλλήλων is the object of the preposition μετά, and so is really not comparable to the Eph 5:21.

12 Waiden, 47(3): 179. 13 Waiden does touch on αλλήλων as an object of prepositions but this does not

promote his case as the preposition changes the relationship of αλλήλων to the rest of the sentence. Thus, in John 6:43 reads "Do not grumble with one another (μετ'άλλήλων)" while in John 13:35 says, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among/in one another (εν άλλήλοις). Again the precise


occurrences are the object of αγαπάω (John 13:34; 15:12,17; Rom 13:8; IThess 4:9; 1 Pet 1:22; 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:7,11, 12; and 2 John 5) where mutuality can hardly be questioned though a large group of people are assumed. That leaves some forty occurrences where mutuality vs. random/distributive use can be contested.

A sampling of these is instructive. In Matt 24:10, Jesus prophesies that "many will stumble and they will hand over one another and will hate one another." Here the verbs establish the exact sense of αλλήλων though the structural relationship is the same (future verb with accusative pronoun) in both cases. "Handing over" does not lend itself to mutuality while "hating" does. Taking another example, Jesus tells his disciples, "... and you should wash one another's feet" (John 13.14). While it is clear enough that not everyone can wash each other's feet at the same time, it is also clear that Jesus expects all of his disciples to engage in this activity. Walden's use of Acts 19:38 ("they can press charges" as in TNIV) fails with the more literal translation: "they can accuse one another."

Furthermore, it is unlikely that people could crucify one another, an action one could not do mutually in the literal sense of the word. However, the literally impossible can happen metaphorically as in "If you keep on biting and devouring each other (αλλήλων), watch out or you will be destroyed by each other (αλλήλων)" (Gal 5:15). Grammatically, then, αλλήλων depends heavily on verbs (or participles) and other elements (such as prepositions) in a sentence to determine any level of mutuality or reciprocity in any given context.14

In Ephesians, as a test case, every occurrence of this pronoun points toward reciprocity or mutuality:

Eph. 4:2 — "forbearing one another in love" Eph. 4:25 — "for we are members one of another" Eph. 4:32 — "and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other" Eph. 5:21 — "subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ"15

Only in the latter case ("submitting") is there an apparent difficulty, but it is not due to the meaning of αλλήλων, but rather to the semantic range of the verb υποτάσσω.

meaning of αλλήλων is determined by its semantic relationship to other elements in the sentence. Another observation might be that verbs of speaking are more open to being understood as "random or distributive" because not everyone can speak at the same time (with much understanding, of course) while verbs signifying attitude (love, respect, etc.) are more open to mutuality.

14 Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2d ed. (New York: United Bible Society, 1989), 92.25 on εαυτού; and 92.26 on αλλήλων, which they understand as "a reciprocal reference between entities—'each other, one another.'"

15 Cited from ASV.


This verb, I concede, presupposes hierarchical structure in which some people are in authority over others.16 Louw and Nida makes it clear that this word group connotes "to submit to the orders or directives of someone—'to obey, to submit to, obedience, submission'" or more forcefully, "to bring something under the firm control of someone—'to subject to, to bring under control.'"17 In the NT this verb is used of relationship of the Christians to government (Rom 13:1; Titus 3:1), wives to husbands (Col 3:18; Titus 2:5), slaves to masters (Titus 2:9; 1 Pet 2:18), the church to her leaders (1 Pet5:5; 1 Cor 16:16), the believer to God (Heb 12:9; Jas 4:7), Jesus' relationship to his earthly parents (Luke 2:51), demons to the disciples of the limited commission (Luke 10:17, 20) and even Christ's ultimate submission to the Father (1 Cor 15:28).

This seems to support Walden's point that Paul could not be setting forth a principle of "mutual submission" between the dyads in the Haustafeln (e.g., wives-husbands; children-fathers; or slaves-masters) as that would be nonsense in clearly hierarchically arranged social structures.18 In both articles, Waiden contends that the text "teaches structure."19 In what sense then can the dyads be said to "be in submission to one another," if that is even possible? The answer is not in the meaning of αλλήλων, or even in the verb "to submit," but in the actual content of Paul's argument developed under each paired relationship.

Paul states, consistent with his culture, that wives should be subject to their husband and grounds this in an analogy of the church's submission to Christ.20

However in dealing with the obligations of husbands to wives, Paul subverts the

16 However, he does not give appropriate attention to the passive form of the participles that would yield "be submissive" opposed to "submit." See also a similar construction in Rom 12:10: τη τιμή αλλήλους προηγούμενοι ("out performing one another with respect") or in Phil 2:3: τη ταπεινοφροσύνη αλλήλους ηγούμενοι υπερέχοντας εαυτών ("in humility considering one another beyond yourselves").

17 Louw and Nida, 36.18; and 37.13. 18 Cf. 1 Pet 5.5, where young people are commanded to obey their elders, and then

everyone, elders included, are encouraged to put on humility in their relationships with one another (ομοίως, νεώτεροι, ύποτάγητε πρεσβυτέεροις πάντες δε άλλήλοις την ταπεινοφροσύνην έγκομβώσασθε, κτλ); this would hardly be possible in a strictly hierarchal understanding of community. Mutual humility suggests mutual submission.

19 Waiden, 45/4:254 and 47/3:180. However, if the text teaches structure that is inviolable then the slave-master relationship poses some serious problems. This view would support the continuation of slavery as a social institution even today when most Christians would consider slavery inherently sinful. Allowing development and change in one structure (master-slave) but not another (husband-wife or parents-child) is a serious inconsistency.

2 0 On marriage among the Roman elite during the first century, see Paul Veyne, ed., A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, trans, by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1987), 33-49. The basis of marriage was in flux during Paul's days, through Stoic influences, the wife as accessory was becoming wife as "friend and "life's companion." Thus, according to Veyne (37), the wife's duty was "to recognize her natural inferiority and obey her husband."


notion of submission. Now the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, even if that means dying for her (v. 25). The outcome of this self-giving is that the church will be cleansed (v. 26) and presented glorious, holy and without fault (v. 27). Paul's exemplar for submission, of course, is Christ who gave himself for others.21 Paul's theology of the incarnation creates a kind of submission different from what was standard in the Greco-Roman world. In that world, submission could only flow in one direction.22 In high Greco-Roman culture a man married to advance his reputation and career. Not so in the cross-shaped world initiated by Jesus and envisioned by Paul. Thus Paul, perhaps carefully avoiding the word, shows the way for husbands to submit to their wives. Kitchen concurs when he sees in this text "the mutuality of the submission."23

Again Charry notes, "Ephesians teaches that the lordship of Christ rather than secular authority grounds the social structure."24 So consequently, with Carter, "Christians, therefore, are called to mutual submission out of reverence for Christ, because they should demonstrate the love that leads to self-sacrifice on behalf of others."25

In the next section (Eph 6:1-4), we would expect children to obey their parents. What is unexpected is the kind of "submission" a father is to show his children: "do not exasperate your children." In the ancient world, fathers controlled the pedagogy of children. In the Christian community, however, children were considered valuable heirs of the kingdom of God and they deserve the deference that position implies. Paul, therefore, calls for Christian fathers to raise their children "in the instruction and teaching of the Lord."26

Paul's treatment of the relationship between masters and slaves (Eph 6.5-9) shows the uniqueness of subversive Christian submission. Moralists of the first century would have echoed Paul's instructions to slaves: they are to obey their masters, even when the masters are not watching them. But in Paul's theological world, slaves are to serve their masters as if they were serving the Lord. While it is the same behavior expected in the ancient world, it has a very different underlying rationale.

21 See John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) on Christ's radical submission as a model for Christian living. Martin, Ephesians, 68-72, discusses the theological basis for Paul's understanding of the relationship between husband and wife. Martin writes, "Yet domination by either sex is not the way our author views the relationship. His primary appeal, as we saw, is the example set by the heavenly Lord and his spouse, the church. This fact controls his understanding of the ambiguous term 'subject' or perhaps better 'be submissive'*' (69).

22 Veyne (45) notes. "Marriage ... was conceived as a friendship—an unequal friendship—between a man and a woman."

23 Martin Kitchen, Ephesians (New York: Routledge, 1994), 99. 24 Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of

Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford, 1997), 56. 23 Philippa Carter, The Servant-Ethic in the New Testament (New York: Peter Lang.

1997), 79. 26 On the place of children in the first century world, see Veyne, 9-31.


Significantly therefore Paul commands slave owners: και οι κύριοι, τα αυτά ποιείτε προς αυτούς ("And masters, treat your slaves in the same way!") The same way as what! Does τα αυτά reach back to submit (5:21), obey (6:5) or serve (6:7)? The most natural reading of the text is that Paul invites Christian masters into a new way of thinking about power and the expected submission of those under their power.27 The following participial phrase (άνίεντες την απειλή ν) offers an example of how this should work: "relinquishing the threat," or "not threatening" them.

Rhetorically and theologically, Paul teaches that mutual submission is basic model of Christian community, even though the social roles of wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves and masters persist. While Paul does not undermine the prevailing social structure, on one hand, he rhetorically subverts those roles, on the other, by grounding them in the self-giving nature of Christ. The admonition to masters to treat slaves in the same way (6:9) parallels the earlier call for Christians to be submissive to another (5:21 ). So in this context, Paul commands masters (κύριοι) "not to threaten" their slaves since both slaves and masters have one Lord (κύριος).28

Finally I would add that the syntactical structure of the text will not bear Walden's reading. The following outline shows the relationship of the participles in Ephesians 5.18-21 to the main verb of verse 18:

18και μη μεθύσκεσθε οϊνω, εν φ έστιν ασωτία,

άλλα πληροΰσθε εν πνεύματι,

19 λαλοΰντες έαυτοίς [εν] ψαλμοΐς και ΰμνοις και ώδαις πνευματικαις,

αδοντες και ψάλλovτεc τη καρδία υμών τω κυρίω,

2 0 εύγαριτοΰντες πάντοτε ύπερ πάντων εν όνομάτι του κυρίου ημών Ιησού Χριστού τω θεώ και πατρί.

21 ύποτασσόιιενοι αλλήλοίς εν φοβω Χριστού, κτλ.

After calling for his readers not to get drunk on wine, Paul commands (imperative in Greek) his readers to "be filled with the Holy Spirit." Resulting from the command are five adverbial participles (all nominative plural, thus retaining the same antecedent): speaking, singing, making music, giving thanks,

2 7 For a good overview of slavery in the Greco-Roman world, see Veyne, 51-69; see also Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 1-49.

2 8 Veyne, 67. In this way, Paul is completely in line with the moralization of slavery, which began under the Roman Republic and continued to the time of Antoninus. On p. 69, e. g., Veyne notes, "The Romans had more respect for good masters and good husbands than for bad ones."


and submitting.29 Reciprocity, as acknowledged by Waiden, is indicated by the use of εαυτών: in verse 19 and αλλήλων in verse 21. Given the parallel structure (participles followed by dative phrase) of verses 19-21, what is true of one participle should be true of all. The people envisioned being filled with the Holy Spirit are also those speaking, singing, making music, giving thanks and submitting.30 Whether the actions are random or distributed throughout the group is a moot point, the entire group is invited to share each of these actions.

The view then that does the most justice to the concerns discussed in this note would be to see Eph 5:21 as the concluding phrase in a series of participles depending on the imperative "be filled with the Spirit," yet also seeing that Eph 5:22 depends on 5:21 for its verbal idea: "Wives [are to be submissive] to their own husbands."31 ThusEph5:21 functions as a hinge that links the previous with the succeeding. If viewed from a discourse analysis point of view, the Haustafeln

are subsumed under "being submissive to one another" which results from being filled with the Spirit. An outline of this would be (with indentations showing subordination of ideas):

Level 1 : Be filled with the Spirit (command) ...

Level 2: ... [and] you will be submissive32 to another (associated behavior)

Level 3: Wives be submissive to their husbands (illustration la) Level 3: Reciprocated with Husbands giving themselves up for their

wives (illustration 1 b) and likewise with fathers [2a] and children [2b] and slaves [3a] and master [3b].3 3

2 9 See, e.g., Martin Kitchen, Ephesians (New York: Routledge, 1994), 99. Neller, "Submission," 245, sees these participles as having imperatival force without defending why he reads them so; however, Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basic: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 651, makes a very strong case against seeing any of these participles as imperatival. Walden's view that the participles illustrate "how one is 'filled with the Spirit,'" (47/3: 181) should be avoided as it gives the impression that human activity prepares the way for being filled with the Spirit. More consistent with Pauline theology is that being filled with the Spirit creates the attendant behavior.

3 0 Wallace, Greek Grammar, 639,644-45, esp. 651, examines the function of these participles in relationship to the main verb in some detail.

31 From a discourse perspective, Waiden grants Eph 5:21 too much honor in seeing it as the "pivotal" verse in the pericope since it is a dependent clause.

32 Reading the participle as resultant rather than' imperatival or circumstantial. 33 This structure is supported by Kenneth L. Boles, Galatians and Ephesians, The

College Press N1V Commentary (Joplin, MO: College Pres, 1993), 311-12, though, he like Waiden, tends to see submission as a one-way street. Bole, argues that "Col 3.18fi\ does not mention mutual submission"; however, as with the Ephesians text, Paul makes the same rhetorical moves in commending the "superior" party to take care of the "inferior." Boles qualifies the submission of the wife by granting the wife's voluntary choice, that submission is ultimately to God and that submission is limited by always choosing God's authority over human authority.

HELTON/EPHESIANS 5:21: A LONGER TRANSLATION NOTE 41

Finally, mutual submission remains the best way to understand Paul's rhetorical goals. Walden's attempt to remove mutuality fails not on lexical ground, despite his overestimation of the role of αλλήλων. Yet his strongest argument is lexicographic as the word υποτάσσω does actually mean to submit to the authority of another. However, meaning is not carried at the lexical level alone. Stringing lexical items together does not necessarily produce meaning. The meaning of words themselves depends on semantic relationship to other elements in a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, etc.34 At the rhetorical level, then, Paul can take literal meaning and flip it over. Yes, Paul teaches wives, children, and slaves to be submissive to those "over" them. However, Paul also demands a level of "submission" from husbands, fathers, and masters premised on the self-giving nature of the incarnation.

34 Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1983), is a good place to start on the relationship of words to larger semantic units.

^ s

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Ephesians 5:21: A Longer Translation Note

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