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Why Ephesians 5:22 Does Not Command Wives To Submit To Their Husbands
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By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, PhD
Many Christians confidently point to their Bibles and claim that Ephesians 5:22 commands wives to submit to their husbands.
This idea is particularly relevant right now because of Mike Huckabee’s campaign for the Republican nomination for President.
In June 1998, The Southern Baptist Convention made an official statement to declare that “a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.”
At that time, Mike Huckabee was the Governor of Arkansas. He was also a former Southern Baptist minister. Huckabee joined 129 other evangelical leaders to support this statement in a full page ad in USA Today.
Huckabee, who was not taken seriously as a possible presidential candidate at the beginning of his campaign, won the Iowa caucuses. This means that we are faced with the possibility that the Republican presidential nominee could be someone who insists that wives are to submit to their husbands.
Although religion and politics are officially separate, this religious idea that wives are to submit to their husbands raises important political questions about equality and the legal rights of women. When politicians make political statement based on the Bible, the claim that “a wife is to graciously submit to the servant leadership of her husband” is not simply a religious idea, but a deeply political one.
However anyone chooses to understand what “submission” and “servant leadership” might mean, the most basic problem with interpretation of this verse concerns translation of the original Greek into English.
Every English translation I have ever seen translates Ephesians 5:22 as a complete sentence, with an imperative verb addressed to women. Here are a few samples:
- “Wives, submit yourself to your own husbands as unto the Lord” (King James Version.)
- “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord” (Modern Language Version.)
- “You wives must submit to your husbands’ leadership in the same way you submit to the Lord” (Living Bible.)
- “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord” (Revised Standard Version.)
- “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord” (New Revised Standard Version.)
- “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord”(New International Version.)
This is clear enough, isn’t it? Whether it is “submit” or “be subject,” in English translations, Ephesians 5:22 is a separate sentence with an imperative verb. Many English Bibles also treat Ephesians 5:22 as the start of a new paragraph.
And this is exactly the problem. Ephesians was not written in English. Ephesians was written in Greek, sometime in the first century. When you consult the Greek version of Ephesians, you will notice something remarkable. (Here is the Greek version in an interlinear form with English translations.)
Verse 5:22, in its entirety reads: “Wives to their own husbands as to the Lord.”
This isn’t even a complete sentence, because there is no verb.
So, where does the idea of submission come from? It comes from the verb of the previous verse, Ephesians 5:21.
In 5:21, the verb is not an imperative addressed only to wives. Instead, it is what Greek grammar calls a “reflexive” verb, in which submission is “to one another other.”
Here are some translations of 5:21.
- “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God (King James Version.)
- Be submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ (Modern Language version.)
- Honor Christ by submitting to one another (Living Bible.)
- Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ (Revised Standard Version.)
- Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ (New Revised Standard.)
- Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (New International Version.)
When it comes to Ephesians 5:21 and 5:22, we have two distinct translation decisions at work in most English Bibles:
The first is that English translations take the idea of submission from the verb in 5:21 and create an imperative form of the verb in 5:22, which has no verb.
The second is that English translations tend to treat 5:21 and 5:22 as separate units, with no real connection to each other.
The separation of 5:21 and 5:22 into separate units demonstrates the sometimes misleading consequences of dividing Biblical books into chapters and verses.
In the earliest Greek manuscripts, there were no spaces between words and no punctuation at all. This means that there were no separate sentences and paragraphs.
All of the punctuation, and the division in sentences, verses, and chapters were added over time. Sometimes, the divisions into sentences, chapters, and verses make logical sense. Other times, these divisions separate what were clearly intended to be whole units.
The division of Ephesians 5:21 and 5:22 is one of the most dramatic examples of dividing what was clearly intended to be a whole thought. 5:22 is a phrase without a verb. The idea of submission comes from 5:21, in which submission is “to one another.”
It is simply irresponsible and misleading to take the idea of submission from 5:21, turn it into an imperative addressed only to women in 5:22, and then disconnect the idea from 5:21. Yet, this is exactly what many English translations do.
The King James Version of the Bible treated every verse as a new paragraph. Many of the newer translations separate chapters and verses into topical paragraphs. Some even add topic headings to the paragraphs.
If you investigate a series of English translations, you will find that some versions treat 5:21 as the closing sentence of a paragraph. Some treat is as a paragraph on its own. Some treat is as the opening sentence of a paragraph which includes 5:22.
The most misleading versions treat 5:22 as the first sentence of a new paragraph, under a heading. For example, the New International Version starts a new paragraph with 5:22, under the heading, “Wives and Husbands.”
What is the effect of these translation and publication decisions? In the time and place in which Ephesians was written, the idea of submission to one another in marriage was a radically new idea. In contrast, there was nothing new in the idea that wives were to submit to their husbands.
As with so many radical ideas coming out of the New Testament, the original idea was lost, and replaced by traditional ideas. The radical vision of mutual submission reverted into a traditional power structure within marriage.
The translators who really do know better reinforce the traditional ideas by adding a verb that is not there, and treating 5:22 as a new paragraph, completely separate from 5:21.
Whether or not Mike Huckabee succeeds in his quest for the presidency, my point is that the Bible is a potent force in our political and social life, for believers and non-believers alike. The real problem is that often claims about the Bible are based on mistranslations and misinterpretations, which tend to reinforce traditional ideas about social status and roles. Ephesians 5:22 is a powerful example of such a mistranslation.
Every English translation I know has imposed a meaning that was not present in the Greek. And this is why Ephesians 5:22 does not command wives to submit to their husbands.
© Kalinda Rose Stevenson, PhD
October 29th, 2008 at 9:26 am
I agree with your opinion concerning textual criticism in it’s original language and translations. I think it is of the utmost importance to understand the context and use only the literal words and their precise meanings without our own traditions and subjective opinions interpreting it. However, in this case, I think you are incorrect in your assumption that Paul was not speaking about women’s submission to their husbands. Even if you assume that the verse has been incorrectly spaced, punctuated, etc. leading to an improper interpretation, you would be ignoring the next few verses which complete the context and explicitly illustrate how men are the head of women just as Christ is of the church. This is not an excuse to boss women around but rather to lead in an appropriate, loving, and Godly manner with Christ as the example. In that regard, I suppose men are to submit to their wives, just as Jesus gave himself for the church and humbled himself on several occasions to his disciples.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Ian, thanks for your thoughtful response. I apologize for the delay. I have been immersed in a business project, which as taken most of my time and attention.
Your comment only raises another question. What exactly does it mean to be “the head?”
We are dealing with a metaphor here. For contemporary Americans, “head” refers to thinking and leading and making decisions. Therefore, the “head” is the decision maker and the husband is therefore “the boss.” With this understanding of “head,” people go on to make the case that you make, that being “the boss” is not an excuse to be “bossy.”
However, this is a highly questionable assumption about the appropriate metaphorical meaning for “head” in Ephesians.
At this point, I am not going to take the time necessary to offer a complete argument, but I will point in the direction my explanation would take.
There is almost no textual evidence that ancient Greeks and Romans used the word “head” as a metaphor for the leader, decision maker, or boss.
In Greek thought, the location of decision-making was not the head, but the heart. And this brings up another distinction. We use the “heart” as a metaphor for emotion and the “head” as a metaphor for logic, and so we tend to miss the real point of all of the references to the “heart” as the site of the decision-making will.
So, here is another point where we assume that our metaphors are the same as their metaphors, and then assume that we know what was being said.
From a metaphorical perspective, the word “head” in Ephesians does not refer to decision but to origin. Even in English, we use “head” to refer to source, as “the head of the Misssippi River is located in Minnesota.
Ephesians is going back to Genesis and the idea of the man being the “source” of the woman. And this brings up another whole discussion about Genesis, and what that means, and how much traditional reading has imposed meaning on the Hebrew narrative.
So,we have the metaphorical meaning of head, Greek and Roman understanding about the true source of decision as the heart, and a whole history of misreading the creation story in Genesis 2-3.
But the critical point is that your comment assumes that “head” refers to leadership. This is a meaning that we have imposed on the text, but no Ephesian would have assumed.
All the best,
Kalinda Rose Stevenson