Passage

Philippians 4.22

Book: Philippians · NASB95

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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Setting

• Speaker: Paul the Apostle, writing with Timothy named as co-sender (Philippians 1:1).
• Audience: The Church at Philippi, in a Roman colony of Macedonia (Acts 16:12), founded on the mission narrated in Acts 16 and addressed with its bishops and deacons (Philippians 1:1). The church had sent Paul a gift by Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25-30, 4:18). The verse is part of the closing greetings (Philippians 4:21-23).
• Location: Written from imprisonment (Philippians 1:7, 1:13). The place is debated: Rome is the traditional identification, and Ephesus and Caesarea are proposed as alternatives.
• Time period: Depends on the imprisonment: c. AD 60-62 if Rome, c. AD 57-59 if Caesarea, the mid-50s if Ephesus.

Theological reading

The greeting widens from Paul's companions to a whole church. Verse 21 sends greetings from "the brethren that are with me"; verse 22 adds a larger circle: "All the saints salute you, especially they that are of Cæsar's household" (Philippians 4:22, ASV). The believers in the place of Paul's imprisonment send their greetings to Philippi through him.

"Caesar's household" means the imperial service, not the emperor's family. The phrase is normally understood of the slaves and freedmen employed in the emperor's administration, a large staff that ran his affairs. Paul does not say why this group is singled out, and the text gives no names.

The phrase bears on the location debate without settling it. The imperial staff was concentrated in Rome, which suits the traditional view, and the greeting is often read with the reference to the praetorium at 1:13. Defenders of an Ephesian or Caesarean origin reply that members of the imperial service were also posted in the provinces, so neither verse is decisive on its own. See Philippians 1:13 for the other half of that evidence.

A later note in some printed Bibles is not part of the text. The KJV prints a subscription after 4:23 saying the letter was written from Rome by Epaphroditus. Subscriptions of this kind were added by later copyists. It records an early tradition about the letter, but it is not evidence from Paul himself.

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.

• None of the words in this verse has its own lexicon entry yet.

Notes

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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.