Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
One Flesh, a Great Mystery
Ephesians 5:31-33
31 “For this cause a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife. Then the two will become one flesh.” · WEB
The oldest sentence about marriage is quoted and then said to be about something else as well, and the chapter ends by returning to two ordinary people.
Verse 31 quotes the sentence that follows the making of the first woman: a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh Genesis 2:24. The letter cites it as it stands, without adjustment.
Then verse 32, and it is the most compressed claim in the chapter: this mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and the assembly.
The word mystery has a fixed sense in this letter — not a puzzle, but something hidden that has now been disclosed Ephesians 3:5. It has been used of God's will, of the inclusion of the gentiles, and of the gospel itself Ephesians 1:9 Ephesians 3:3 Ephesians 6:19. Here it is used of marriage.
What the verse claims is that the sentence from the garden was always saying more than it appeared to say. Not that marriage is a figure invented to illustrate Christ and the church, and not that the Genesis verse means something other than marriage — the letter has just spent seven verses giving husbands practical instructions on the assumption that it means exactly that. Both hold: the union is real, and it was patterned on something.
And the letter does not extend the correspondence. Nothing is decoded item by item, and one flesh is not allegorized.
Verse 33 then closes by coming back down. Nevertheless — after the height of the mystery — each of you must also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she respects her husband. One Greek word stands behind that last verb, and the English translations divide over it, rendering it as respect or as fear.
held with reason What this mark means