Chapter 6

Instructions to children and parents.

2023 - First verse:

1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. [Eph 6:1 KJV].  The word here translated children most often means that.  Minor children, usually sons.  It can also be used of adults as in "my child", and the students of a teacher were often called his children.  There is NOTHING in the context here that would broaden the meaning beyond "minor children".  The point is that adult children are adults, and there is no "command" for grown men to obey their parents, much less their mothers.  When a man leaves his father and mother, he no longer is required to obey.  He can.  He can ask for advice.  But there is no command to obey once he is out of the house.  Verse 2 is different...though there is no reason to say it is about adults instead of children, except that it is quoted from the 10 which were given to ALL Israel.  I do not believe we can find a basis for saying that when giving the 10 God sometimes spoke only to the children.  So vs 2 is from everyone.

2021-2, This verse:

[Eph 6:2 ESV] "Honor your father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise),

[Eph 6:3 ESV] "that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land."

In these two verses Paul pulls the 5th commandment into the New Testament.  Paul has made it very clear in other places that the Law is no more.  It is completely gone, and all are free from its requirements in the same way that a widow is free of her dead husband.  No further obligation.  And yet here, he pulls the Ten into the New Testament, still to be obeyed as "always".  Why is that?  It is because God spoke those commandments directly, verbally, to all the children of Israel.  It was hearing God's voice in this way that prompted the people to petition Moses to be an intercessor for them after that.  They did not want to hear directly from God because it scared them to death.  So the Law, as spoken from God through Moses and later the Aaronic and Levitical priests, is what went away.  But what God spoke directly can never pass away.  The Ten will always be with us, and this is why.

2023 - Looked up honor in both Greek and in the Hebrew from Ex 20.  Neither defines the word honor.  They both use the English word honor in the translation.  It is understood that we already know what honor - as a verb - really means.  In Hebrew, it is the piel form, which I do not understand, but it can be a verbal noun, which makes sense here.  In Hebrew it can also mean "to make heavy", which obviously does not apply.  In Greek, the word is "timao", and it can mean "to estimate, to fix the value".  It is interesting that in both senses, there is this second possibility that I think makes this command clearer.  I do not think the idea is that we ought to "honor without cause" just because they are our parents.  I think an assessment is implied here.   Here is the Merriam-Webster for honor, the verb form:  "to regard or treat (someone) with admiration and respect : to regard or treat with honor."  I can get behind that.  Same as we are to do for the King, the President, and so on.  The position carries an obligation of honor by others.  You cannot insult the President, no matter what you think of him.  BECAUSE he is the President, and God put him there.  Same with parents.  So much easier to honor them when we value them highly, but still possible even if we don't.  So three commands, to three different audiences, in 4 verses.  First, to children, then to everyone, and then to fathers. 

Servants and masters.  Hmm....this outline seems to follow that of the final chapters of Colossians.  Yes, 5:22 on closely parallels Colossians 4 on.  Some topics are expanded, some contracted, but the outline of the two sections is very similar.

Vss 10-12, The battle is not with flesh and blood.  The enemy is Satan, and we need spiritual armor to confront him.

Even this prayer that Paul asks them to pray for him is very similar to his request of the Colossians:

19 and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. [Eph 6:19-20 ESV]

2021 - Here it is again.  It shows up over and over and over in the ESV:

23 Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. [Eph 6:23 ESV]

There is a footnote on the word "brothers" that reads "Or brothers and sisters".  That is a cultural footnote, and has no basis in what Paul said.  The Greek word is "adelphos", and is used 346 times in the KJV.  It is never not once even translated with sisters anywhere in it.  Of course, that was KJV.  But even so, in the Greek language, the word is a masculine noun.  Surely Greek has a  feminine noun that means sisters.  Paul chose not to put that in a single solitary time.  He didn't put it in because it is not what he meant.  Now, we ought to be mature enough as Christians to know that when Paul said "adelphos" he meant the church.  He meant everyone.  But let us remember, too, that he just got through writing Eph 5:22-24, and 5:33.  It just might well be that what Paul meant was, I am writing this stuff to the men, and as I just got done saying earlier, the men should pass it on to their wives.  And that's the same thing he meant in Corinthians when he said let the woman ask her questions at home!  He meant brothers directly and sisters indirectly.  This is my argument, I realize, but I think it is a pretty good argument, and that it exposes this constant "or brothers and sisters" thing in ESV for what it is.  A nod to some "influential groups" who wanted their feminism included in the Bible, so that they can say "See, Paul didn't really mean just men, the ESV shows us that in the footnotes."   At least ESV did not put sisters up in the verse as if it existed in the original.  NLT, NIV, CSB, and NET  all put sisters right up there in the verse.  That is adding to the word, and may they get God's justice for doing it, and for all the repercussions that it initiates.