Ephesians 5:29

οὐδεὶς γάρ ποτε τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σάρκα ἐμίσησεν : for no one ever hated his own flesh. The γάρ gives a reason for the preceding statement, looking to the thought, however, rather than to the form of the statement. The thought is the oneness of husband and wife, the position of the wife as part of the husband's self; and the connection is this “he should love her even as Christ loved the Church, for the wife, I say, is as the body in that natural relationship in which the husband is the head, so that in loving her he loves himself; and this is the reason in nature why he should love her, for according to this to hate his wife is to hate his own flesh, which is contrary to nature and a thing never seen”. σάρξ has here its non-ethical sense, practically = σῶμα (as in Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8; 1 Corinthians 6:16, etc.). ἀλλʼ ἐκτρέφει καὶ θάλπει αὐτήν : but nourisheth and cherisheth it. The form ἀλλά is preferred again by LTTr WRV. The ἐκ - in the comp. ἐκτρέφει may point to the careful, continued nourishing from one stage to another, nourishing up to maturity. Ell. takes it to express “the evolution and development produced by the τρέφειν ” (so, too, Mey., etc.). As θάλπειν means primarily to warm, some give it the literal sense here, supposing it to look to the covering and protection of the body as ἐκτρέφει looks to its nourishment “fovet” spectat amictum, says Bengel, ut “nutrit” victum; and so Mey. But the secondary sense seems more appropriate here, especially in view of the following affirmation regarding Christ, and as it is in 1 Thessalonians 2:7. καθὼς καὶ ὁ Κύριος [Χριστὸς] τὴν ἐκκλησίαν : even as the Lord [Christ] also the Church. For the Κύριος of the TR (with [671] 3 [672] [673], etc.) read with the best critics Χριστός, which is given in [674] [675] [676] [677] 1 [678], 17, and most Versions and Fathers. That is, “even as Christ also nourisheth and cherisheth the Church” a broad statement of Christ's loving care for His Church, into which no reference to the Lord's Supper (which is nowhere in view here) as the means by which the nourishing is effected can be dragged (as, e.g., by Kahnis, etc.).

[671] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

[672] Codex Mosquensis (sæc. ix.), edited by Matthæi in 1782.

[673] Codex Angelicus (sæc. ix.), at Rome, collated by Tischendorf and others.

[674] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[675] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[676] Codex Alexandrinus (sæc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).

[677] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

[678] Codex Augiensis (sæc. ix.), a Græco-Latin MS., at Trinity College, Cambridge, edited by Scrivener in 1859. Its Greek text is almost identical with that of G, and it is therefore not cited save where it differs from that MS. Its Latin version, f, presents the Vulgate text with some modifications.