ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Passage

Ephesians 6.5

Book: Ephesians · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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ASV

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;

  1. not in the way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers; but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 7. with good will doing service, as unto the Lord, and not unto men: (Ephesians 6:3-7, ASV)
WEB

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;

  1. 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; 7. with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men; (Ephesians 6:3-7, WEB)
KJV

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;

  1. Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 7. With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: (Ephesians 6:3-7, KJV)
YLT

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;

  1. not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as servants of the Christ, doing the will of God out of soul, 7. with good-will serving, as to the Lord, and not to men, (Ephesians 6:3-7, YLT)

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Setting

  • Speaker: Paul the Apostle.
  • Audience: Believers at Ephesus. Several of the earliest witnesses, including P46 and the original hands of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, lack the words "in Ephesus" at 1:1, which has long suggested the letter circulated among the churches of the Roman province of Asia rather than addressing one congregation alone.
  • Location: Written from imprisonment. Paul calls himself "the prisoner of Christ Jesus" (Eph 3:1, 4:1) and "an ambassador in chains" (Eph 6:20); the traditional identification is the Roman custody of Acts 28.
  • Time period: c. AD 60-62 on the traditional Roman-imprisonment dating.

Theological reading

The verse sits inside a Haustafel, a household code, running from 5:21 through 6:9 and addressing three pairs: wives and husbands, children and fathers, slaves and masters. Reading verse 5 apart from its pair at verse 9 misreads the form, because the structural point of the code is that both members of each pair are addressed.

What the text says. Hoi douloi, hypakouete tois kata sarka kyriois, "slaves, obey those who are your masters according to the flesh." Doulos denotes a bondservant in the Greco-Roman household. Ancient slavery was not chattel slavery on the racialized Atlantic model. It was widespread, not race-based, frequently temporary, and included educated household managers, physicians and teachers. That is a matter of historical accuracy rather than a defence, and it should be offered as the former.

Three features that are easy to miss.

  1. Slaves are addressed as moral agents. Comparable pagan household codes give instruction about slaves to the master. Paul speaks to the slaves, as persons capable of serving Christ from the heart, which presupposes a moral standing the surrounding culture did not grant them.
  2. Kata sarka is a qualifier, not a throwaway. The mastery is "according to the flesh," which is to say temporal and bodily. The same letter has already named one Lord (4:5), and verse 9 says of master and slave alike that "both their Master and yours is in heaven."
  3. The reciprocity at verse 9 is the sharp edge. Kai hoi kyrioi, ta auta poieite pros autous, "and masters, do the same things to them," followed by "and there is no partiality with Him." A command to the master to do "the same things" toward his slave has no parallel in the household codes of the period, and it dissolves the ownership relation at the level Paul cares most about, the level of final accountability.

The honest limit. The passage regulates conduct inside an existing institution; it does not abolish it, and claiming otherwise overstates the text. The abolitionist case in the New Testament runs elsewhere: Galatians 3:28, where the slave-free distinction is one of the three that no longer determine standing; Philemon, where Paul asks that a runaway be received "no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother"; and 1 Timothy 1:10, where andrapodistai, slave-traders or kidnappers, are listed among the lawless. A defence that claims more than this for Ephesians 6:5 invites the correction it deserves.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Lexicon:

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.