Bite 66: Ascension and Captives in Ephesians 4:1-16

Challenging Section Ahead

You know how there are sometimes tasks lurking in the corners of your life that you know you have to deal with but you just aren’t sure how they will go?

This is one reason I love jeeping and mountain biking. Obstacles that seem ridiculous to overcome: taken slowly, with careful thought, and heeding advice from experts around me, they can be conquered. When I conquer one seemingly insane obstacle, I have that experience in my rearview mirror of life to remind me that I can overcome another.

This OT reference that is coming up is one similar to that for me. Now we both know that it is causing me a little angst. I’m not sure if it will be in our study this Bite or the next one, but it is coming. And I haven’t the foggiest what Paul was talking about when he brought it up.

Which is fine, of course. Backpacks at the door are easier when you don’t have anything in the backpack about a topic. I guess I’d like you to know that I’m with you every step of the way. When you feel a measure of anxiety about studying or any other difficulty in your life, you can know you are not alone.

And studying this OT reference is one more item in my life that gives me a few fits, I will walk through it, and come out on the other side better for the triumph over difficulty. Let’s get to studying!

Our Passage

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, 
urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling 
to which you have been called, 
2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, 
bearing with one another in love, 
3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 
4 There is one body and one Spirit—
just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 
6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 
7But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 
8 Therefore it says, 
                      “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, 
                       and he gave gifts to men.” 
9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean 
but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 
10 He who descended is the one who also ascended 
far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, 
the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, 
for building up the body of Christ, 
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 
14 so that we may no longer be children, 
tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, 
by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, 
we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 
16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together 
by every joint with which it is equipped, 
when each part is working properly, 
makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.1

But Grace

In our study of this passage so far, we are seeing that unlike human beings and our tendencies, God and everything about him is unified. Not uniform, but one in mind and spirit and purpose and substance (God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:6). Other. Though we must remember that he is also relatable.

And then Paul has a contrast. But this grace was given to human beings who are not unified.

My First Step in the Process

Do you see that this off-set section in Ephesians 4:8 is indicated in the ESV as an OT reference? I have gone to Psalm 68 to check it out. Here are the notes I jotted as I thought about the context of the psalm as a whole.

Then reading through on to Psalm 68:18, where the editors of the ESV connect Ephesians 4:8, the text reads this way.

You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.2

Compare the NET

I’ve heard the suggestion from other texts that the author “modified the text” from what he was quoting to “support,” but that seems weak in a lot of cases. Although sometimes there is merit to it, there would be biblical authors interpreting the meaning of texts as they write. Under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that is part of the job.

The hymn quote in this case seems like the most plausible solution, since ancient hymns were poetic, using that genre of literature to express through rhythm. Song allows for recall of doctrine, and has for thousands of years. Paul also has an affinity for quoting lines from hymns, similar to how we might quote modern songs, theologians, or even the Babylon Bee to one another to demonstrate our point.

My Conclusion About OT Reference?

At this point in my study, I agree with the scholarship of the NET over the ESV with regard to this conundrum. The contexts do not seem to mesh together and that reversal of the getting gifts as opposed to giving gifts? That seems like a big discrepancy.

Now you might be thinking, then why did we do all the work of skimming and noting from Psalm 68? Because now we have a familiarity with not only the first few verses of that psalm where God is demonstrated to restore and put things right, but we’ve had the opportunity to walk through some of the same difficulties that the scholars who labor to bring us the best renditions of the scriptures they know how to bring.

See? It’s hard to translate from original languages. It’s hard to know what was going through the minds of the authors. They do the best they can and then it’s our job to study, using tools available to us, and the brains God gave us to see what we think as well. We do not have a blind faith, as Sproul would say, our faith should bring us into the light of knowledge and out of the darkness. (See, we paraphrase people AND hymns. Just like Paul.)

But About this Grace

In order to re-order my thinking and back away from the idea of this being OT quotation, I decided to note on a sticky the progression in our passage. Here is what I observed.

Grace was Given

After Paul explains that All That God Is is unified, he tells his audience that each one of them has been given gifts that correspond to the portion of gifting Christ has.

I want to get to this, but it ties into the text a few verses down. Let’s take this idea of grace and the giving of it along with the rest of what Paul has to say about it, together in a bit. Inserted in the middle of it is the text having to do with ascension and what-not. We will take a moment to consider this ascension first.

Ephesians 4:7-8

And so we arrive at the portion of text that has been giving me fits. But do you see that as we have walked through our study so far, we’ve been able to recognize that Psalm 68:18 was not likely to be the text Paul had in mind? It was probably the initial source as far as the poetry Paul was quoted based on how similar the wording is, but we don’t need to reconcile Psalm 68 with Ephesians 4 because we’ve decided for now that Paul’s intent didn’t connect them. And since that is the case, we get to move on to figure out a more plausible reason that Paul used this quote in Ephesians 4:8.

In Ephesians 4:8 are three statements of what Jesus did:

1. He ascended on high
2. He led a host of captives
3. He gave gifts to men

We will briefly look at each of these in order to learn what Paul has to teach his audience, which by extension, includes us today.

He Ascended on High

When we look at this ascension idea and what the evangelists of the day were attempting to teach their audiences, we have two main biblical authors who tried to explain this. Paul and John. And Luke did touch on it for a moment, as well. However, Paul mentions it in Romans 10:6, around 57 A.D., and again here in Ephesians around 60 A.D. Then around 85 A.D., John seems to emphasize Jesus’ comments regarding this idea in a number of passages and a number of ways.

Here is some of what the evangelist remembered of Jesus’ sayings in John.

31 He who comes from above is above all. 
He who is of the earth belongs to the earth 
and speaks in an earthly way. 
He who comes from heaven is above all.3

62 Then what if you were to see
the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?4

23 He said to them, 
“You are from below; 
I am from above. 
You are of this world; 
I am not of this world.5

Jesus Fills All

And Paul explains some of the reason for the travel plans, going down and up: that Jesus might fill all things. Just briefly, let’s look at a dictionary for a clarification of what this filling means in the culture of Paul’s audience.

In Eph. 4:10 Christ is the one who, having achieved dominion, dispenses the gifts of grace in fullness (vv. 7ff.). There is no reference here to spatial extension. Eph. 1:23 is to the same effect. “All” means all cosmic beings capable of will and decision, and “in all” means “in every respect” or “through all the forces that are subject to him” (v. 22). In virtue of his universal dominion Christ gives life and power to the whole church. The prayer of 3:19 is that the recipients may be filled absolutely with God’s boundless gifts. ⁶

Why does Paul tell his audience that Jesus came down and went up? TDNTA summed it up for us, “In virtue of his universal dominion Christ gives life and power to the whole church.”

Captives

This next phrase, rendered in the ESV, he led a host of captives, doesn’t seem to be an easy nut to crack. You remember that in other Bites, we’ve talked about the issues that arise when a word is only used once in all of scripture? A couple of those are

1. How should it be translated?
2. What does it mean?

This phrase he led a host of captives is taken by scholars as a unit. As in, it is an idiom or some other kind of saying. I like cookies, so the English idiom that comes to mind as an example for one that you cannot dismantle in order to define is “that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

If you take the word “cookie” from the idiom, and define it, you have done no justice to the definition of the phrase.

If Paul is quoting this contemporary-to-him hymn (ha! that’s a funny play on words if you read it out loud), then we will have difficulty understanding context or finding the specific meaning of the phrase.

NET

We’ve looked at how the ESV translates this phrase, and we’ve touched briefly on how the NET translates it differently. I’ll bring it here for us to examine.

7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he capturedcaptives; he gave gifts to men.” 9 Now what is the meaning of “he ascended,” except that he also descended to the lower regions, namely, the earth?

Side Note

Funny that when I copied the section from the NET, it squishes the captured/captives together. I'm not going to change it even though it bugs me because that is how it copied. Not my material. End side note.

Back to the NET

As one of our tools to lead us into right interpretation, we know that comparing translations is helpful. I have 6-7 Bibles open in tabs in Logos, linked together. When I show you this Greek translation I keep open, I’m not saying I can read it. But I can recognize words that we are working on. Look at what the modern Greek translators (in this case, older is not superior because the modern translators have more of the manuscripts and minuscules, which have been discovered and analyzed for authenticity, available to them than less modern scholars) say this verse says:

Lexham English Bible

In order to finish looking at the translation tabs I have open on my screen, I decided to look lastly at the LEB. The NET isn’t the only English Bible to go this direction.

At the end of this Bite, we will discuss more about how these phrases go together, what they mean, and maybe even a tiny bit of how they impact our lives.

Gave Gifts to Men

I think we are going to take this phrase in a separate Bite. As I see it, the ideas of grace was given in Ephesians 4:7, he gave gifts to men in Ephesians 4:8, and he gave apostles… in Ephesians 4:11 are related. I could most definitely be wrong, but as we chatted about before, having a plan is a good idea. The plan may need to change mid-stream, but having a plan is better than wandering around in circles.

Reflection

What does this section, Ephesians 4:8-10, mean?

I think that Paul was explaining to believing audiences across Asia that Jesus came down to accomplish his tasks. Once that was accomplished, he went back up.

As he went up, he took the bondage captive that plagued the world. As believers in Christ, we no longer need to be captive to anyone or anything because Jesus has set us free. We are free. When we get to the grace Paul talks about, and the verses that follow this passage, I think we are going to be enlightened as to what freedom frees us to do.

“Chains are broken, you have saved me.” Seems like there is some song that says something like that. Paraphrasing songs to illustrate points is still practiced today.

Wrap Up

There were a couple of times in our Bite today where we wrestled with translations. Once we considered footnotes and whether or not we agreed with one translator footnote over another’s. Another time we weighed the translation itself. Is one translation closer to the author’s intent, to his words, than another?

In conversations I have with friends about the Bible, I hear a lot of fierce loyalty and determination to hold English Bibles as the inerrant Word of God. Yes…and no.

Not Heresy

Before you ring the alarm of heresy, pause and consider what I’m saying. Let’s focus for a moment just on the gospels. What language did Jesus most likely speak when addressing the masses in Israel? At least some of the time? Not Hebrew. Not Greek to Hebrew peasants. He probably spoke the common tongue of Aramaic. Where are the Aramaic scriptures recording the very words Jesus spoke on the earth?

What we have recorded in Aramaic are nestled in the Greek writings of the gospel writers, when they chose to quote Jesus using his native tongue. Therefore, what the gospel writers wrote? Translations. Interpretations. All under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Very Word of God that he wanted recorded in Greek. The original languages that the evangelists, the gospel writers, wrote are the inerrant words of God.

After that, translations into German, Spanish, English, all the translations introduce the possibility of added interpretation and commentary into the translation. As D.A. Carson is quoted as saying, “No translation is perfect.” Which is why our Bible Study Bite for today is “compare scholarly translations in your study.”

To sum up, I want to leave you with what an authority on scripture says about translations.

In one sense every translation is a commentary: every translation involves the process of decision making with respect to words and ideas. Thus a perfect translation will not be found. Even those translations produced by a check-and-balance system utilizing a team of scholars will inevitably reflect the individual or corporate bias of the translators. Such bias is frequently kept at a minimum and should not be cause of alarm. But the reader should be aware of this human frailty of translation.⁹

Thanks for studying with me today. If you found anything useful in your Bible study “meal planning,” would you please share this article with another fellow student of the Word?

1. Ephesians 4:1-16
2. Psalm 68:18 (ESV)
3. John 3:31 (ESV)
4. John 6:62 (ESV)
5. John 8:23 (ESV)
6. Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (pp. 868–869). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
7. Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (pp. 868). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
8. Harris, W. H., III, Ritzema, E., Brannan, R., Mangum, D., Dunham, J., Reimer, J. A., & Wierenga, M. (Eds.). (2012). The Lexham English Bible (Eph 4:8). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
9. Sproul, R.C. (2009). Knowing Scripture (p. 131). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.