¹ tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² tn Grk “subjected.”

³ tn Grk “his”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ sn An allusion to Ps 8:6.

⁵ tn Grk “and he gave him as head over all things to the church.”

⁶ sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

⁷ tn Grk “walked.”

sn The Greek verb translated lived (περιπατέω, peripatew) in the NT letters refers to the conduct of one’s life, not to physical walking.

⁸ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

sn The word translated present path is the same as that which has been translated [this] age in 1:21 (αἰών, aiwn).

⁹ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

¹⁰ tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

¹¹ sn The ruler of the kingdom of the air is also the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience. Although several translations regard the ruler to be the same as the spirit, this is unlikely since the cases in Greek are different (ruler is accusative and spirit is genitive). To get around this, some have suggested that the genitive for spirit is a genitive of apposition. However, the semantics of the genitive of apposition are against such an interpretation (cf. ExSyn 100).

¹² tn Grk “working in.”

¹³ sn Sons of disobedience is a Semitic idiom that means “people characterized by disobedience.” However, it also contains a subtle allusion to vv. 4-10: Some of those sons of disobedience have become sons of God.

¹⁴ sn The object of these dimensions is not stated in the text. Interpreters have suggested a variety of referents for this unstated object, including the cross of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem (which is then sometimes linked to the Church), God’s power, the fullness of salvation given in Christ, the Wisdom of God, and the love of Christ. Of these interpretations, the last two are the most plausible. Associations from Wisdom literature favor the Wisdom of God, but the immediate context favors the love of Christ. For detailed discussion of these interpretive options, see A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians (WBC), 207-13, who ultimately favors the love of Christ.

¹⁵ tn To avoid a lengthy, convoluted sentence in English, the Greek sentence was broken up at this point and the verb “pray” was inserted in the English translation to pick up the participle προσευχόμενοι (proseuxomenoi, “praying”) in v. 18.

¹⁶ tn Grk “that a word may be given to me in the opening of my mouth.” Here “word” (λόγος, logo") is used in the sense of “message.”

¹⁷ tn The infinitive γνωρίσαι (gnwrisai, “to make known”) is functioning epexegetically to further explain what the author means by the preceding phrase “that I may be given the message when I begin to speak.”