Intertextuality Pair

Ephesians 6:1-3 → Exodus 20:12

Quotation

Later text

Ephesians 6:1-3BSB

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.”

Earlier text

Exodus 20:12BSB

Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 5:16BSB

Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square9:15

Significance

Paul quotes Exodus 20:12 LXX (fifth commandment) as "the first command with a promise," focusing not on honoring parents as parallel to honoring God (as first-century interpreters did) but on the attached promise. The hermeneutical move transforms the land-specific promise ("in the land the Lord gives you") to universal scope ("on the earth"), possibly reflecting new creation theology. Paul may indicate that children obeying parents "in the Lord" (6:1) receive not temporal Israel's land but eternal life on the renewed earth where God's people reign with Christ. This fits Paul's broader transformational pattern in Ephesians: temple becomes community (2:21-22), dividing wall abolished (2:14), land promise becomes new creation inheritance. The eschatological reality transforms OT categories while fulfilling their deeper purpose.

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s)
Analogy + Redemptive-Historical Progression

▸ The Decalogue

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