Passage

Ephesians 6.4

"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." (Ephesians 6:4, NASB95)

Paul's single verse to fathers in the Ephesian household code. Two prohibitions implied behind one explicit one: do not exasperate. And one positive: raise them in paideia and nouthesia "of the Lord." Brief, dense, and load-bearing for the Christian doctrine of the household.

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"2. Honor thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), 3. that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth."

"4. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord."

"5. Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; 6. not in the way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers; but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;" (Ephesians 6:2-6, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"2. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with a promise: 3. “that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth.”"

"4. You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."

"5. Servants, be obedient to those who according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as to Christ; 6. not in the way of service only when eyes are on you, as men pleasers; but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;" (Ephesians 6:2-6, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"2. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3. That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth."

"4. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

"5. Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; 6. Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;" (Ephesians 6:2-6, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"2. honour thy father and mother, 3. which is the first command with a promise, 'That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live a long time upon the land.'"

"4. And the fathers! provoke not your children, but nourish them in the instruction and admonition of the Lord."

"5. The servants! obey the masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as to the Christ; 6. not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as servants of the Christ, doing the will of God out of soul," (Ephesians 6:2-6, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Paul the Apostle, writing from imprisonment
Audience: the church at Ephesus, with the wider Asia-Minor circuit likely in view
Location: composed in Roman custody (most likely Rome, possibly Caesarea or Ephesus); addressed to Ephesus
Time period: composed c. AD 60-62

Theological reading

The verse sits inside the Ephesian Haustafel (household code, 5:22-6:9), Paul's Christianized rewrite of the Greco-Roman oikonomia genre. In the surrounding pagan codes the father is the absolute paterfamilias; children, wives, and slaves are addressed as instruments. Paul keeps the address-by-station form and inverts its content. Each station gets a reciprocal obligation. Wives are addressed as moral agents, not property. Slaves are addressed as free in Christ, masters as also under a Master. And fathers, who in the surrounding culture were under no constraint at all in dealing with children, are given two obligations: a negative one (don't provoke to anger) and a positive one (raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord).

The negative side, "do not provoke" (me parorgizete), is the single most counter-cultural word in the verse. Paul does not weaken paternal authority. He bends it. The father is responsible for the child's wrath. If the child is exasperated, the father is implicated. Roman law had no such category.

The positive side has two technical terms. Paideia is the formative discipline (training, correction, even chastening) that shapes character; in the surrounding Hellenistic world it named a whole educational ideal. Nouthesia is admonition by word, correction-by-speaking. Paul brings the two together and qualifies them with the genitive "of the Lord." Christian parenting is not generic moral formation with Jesus added at the end. It is formation whose content, motive, and method come from the Lord.

Note the parallel address to slaves (6:5) and to masters (6:9) in the immediate next breath. Paul will not let any in-house authority, paternal, marital, civil, economic, slip the leash of the Lordship of Christ. This is the doctrinal logic that closes the gap to the contemporary "Spare the Rod" objection: Paul's Christian discipline is precisely not unrestrained corporal severity but formation that aims at the child's good and is bounded by an explicit prohibition on provoking the child to wrath. See Spare the Rod Objection Defeater for the structured response.

Key words

G3962 - pater, pater, "father"; same word Jesus uses of God in the Lord's Prayer, conditioning Christian fatherhood.

Theological themes

Reciprocal authority. Paternal authority is real; it is also bounded and accountable.
Christian formation. Paideia + nouthesia + "of the Lord." Content, motive, and method all under Christ.
Anti-provocation rule. Christian fatherhood is the only household-code tradition in antiquity that puts an explicit prohibition on the father's side.
Household discipleship. The home is the first catechism.

Cross-references

Colossians 3.21, Paul's parallel: "Fathers, do not embitter your children, that they may not lose heart."
Deuteronomy 6.6-7, the foundational household-catechesis text Paul echoes.
Proverbs 22:6, "train up a child in the way he should go."
Hebrews 12.5-11, God's paideia of His children, the model.
Matthew 18.6, the severity of leading a child into sin.
Ephesians 5.22, start of the household code Paul is building.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.