Ephesians 4:9

Now that he ascended More lit., Now the [word, or thought,] He ascended.

what is it As if to say, "What does it imply? It implies a previous descent, from the seat of royalty. And, in the light of the Fulfilment, this implied descent was -to the lower parts of the earth." " The Apostle does not mean that the Psalm teaches anything special about the Descent, but that it implies aDescent, and that what that Descent was, Christians know. And the interest of the implied reference is, its supernatural correspondence in outline to Gospel facts; its imagery being of One who has left His throneand now returns upward.

first Evidence is divided as to the right of this word to a place in the text. It is obviously, at worst, explanatory of the sense.

the lower parts of the earth Does this mean "the lower regions, even the earth," as distinct from heaven? Or, "the lower regions of the earth," i.e. the region underground, the grave and its world? Our great theologian and critical scholar, Bp Pearson (Exposition of the Creed, Art. V.), inclines to the former view, with a reference to the Incarnation only. The phrase, so taken, may perhaps be illustrated by Isaiah 44:23; where, however, "lower parts of the earth" (LXX. "foundations of the earth") may be contrasted with "mountains." (Cp. also, perhaps, Psalms 139:15.) On the other hand Psalms 63:9 is distinctly in favour of a reference to "the grave." Our judgment is on the whole for the second view, with a reference to the Death and Burial of the Incarnate Lord. Such a reference seems better to balance, in a sense, the phrase just below, "far above all heavens"; it falls in better with the amplitude of the words, "that He might fill all things" (cp. Romans 14:9); and it is in the manner of the N. T. to connect the Resurrectionand Ascension as parts of one great whole. And the Lord's Death is so profoundly concerned with the procurement of blessings to His Church that an allusion to it is à priorilikely here. Many of the Fathers (see Pearson's notes under Art. V. of the Creed) take this passage to refer to a definite work done by the Lord in the under-world, a deliverance of the spirits of the Old Testament saints from a "Limbus" there. But certainly the words here teachnothing of the kind; only that He who suffered for us entered the state of disembodied souls, "the Grave," "Sheol," "Hades." The mysterious passage 1 Peter 3:18-19, will at once occur in the question. But upon it we can only say here that it is too isolated, and involves too many problems of interpretation, to allow any great and peculiararticle of belief to be built upon it; and, upon any view, its only explicitreference is to the generation of the Flood. See again Pearson. And for a different view from his, stated with great ability and insight, see Note II. to The Unsafe Anchor, by the Rev. C. F. Childe.