Ephesians 4:9

9. Now The apostle now proceeds to give an exegesis of the psalmist’s words to show their applicability. The fact that the psalmist’s Jehovah ascended, implies that he had previously descended. Now commentators decide variously the questions that naturally arise. Does St. Paul here simply quote a passage from the Psalms as we would quote a passage of poetry apt to our subject? Or, does he view Jehovah’s ascent, with its implied descent, as a fitting emblem of Christ’s descent and ascension? Or is the former a divinely appointed type of the latter? Or were the images and words imparted by the true Jehovah-Jesus to his prophet-psalmist, truly, as by a glimpse, delineating his own descent and ascension? Either of these views justifies the apostle’s language. We prefer the first. As psalmist and apostle were both endowed with the same inspiration, St. Paul assuredly gives a true meaning, if not the sole true meaning, of the psalmist’s words; nay, he had a true endowment to read a new true meaning into the old words.

Lower parts of the earth By one class of commentators this phrase is made to signify simply the earth; that is, these lower grounds, consisting of earth, in contrast with the heavens above. The phrase is used nine times in the Old Testament: Ezekiel 26:20; Ezekiel 31:14; Ezekiel 31:16; Ezekiel 31:18; Ezekiel 32:18; Ezekiel 32:24; Ezekiel 26:20; Isaiah 44:12; and Psalms 63:9. Dr.

Craven shows very clearly that in none of these cases can it designate merely the earth. He seems to establish the ground held by another class of commentators, that it signifies hades; by which we understand the unseen world of human disembodied spirits. Most of the above nine texts are, it will be seen, in Ezekiel, where the phrase is in our version freely translated hell. In the passage in Psalms the phrase figuratively designates the womb, as being the dark, semi-conscious hades of the unborn soul. For it was to a dim and obscure hades that good as well as bad expected to descend under the twilight of the old dispensation. See notes on Luke 16:22-23; Luke 23:43. That our Saviour, during his three days of burial, did visit in soul the region of spirits, is clear from his own statement to the dying thief, (Luke 23:43,) and from Peter’s words, (Acts 2:27,) and, perhaps, from 1 Peter 3:19.

The lowers or nethers of the earth (for the Greek word for parts is probably not genuine) means apparently the subterranean regions. Clearly in Greek and Roman paganism, Avernus, or the abodes of the spirits of the dead, was held to be beneath the earth’s surface. Both Homer and Virgil lead their heroes through the dark gates into the under world, where are Elysium and Tartarus, and where the good and the evil receive their due awards. No such full narrative or description is found in the Old Testament. And phrases like this might, perhaps, be explained on the principle of our note on Romans 10:7. To the ancients the heavens were a vast concave above, and the earth was a vast plain below, and the two made the great whole. God and angels were above in the heavens; man below; and hades still lower a descent into the silent shades, and so lower than the plane of which the earth’s surface is part, if not directly beneath the earth’s surface. And these rudimental conceptions, though immensely supplemented by science, are uncontradicted by science, and are still essentially true. The first half of the Eighth Psalm was as true to Newton as to David, with a stupendous amount of underlying meaning superadded. Addison, in the age of Kepler and Newton, paraphrased that psalm in the lines,

“The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

Their great Original proclaim.”

The poet knew that he was painting but an apparent surface of things, yet he knew that that visible or conceptual surface covers and stands for all the truths, regions, and objects underlying that surface, as discovered and revealed to us by astronomy. But see our note, next verse.

Dr. Craven, adopting an ancient but not primitive theory, supposes that Christ in his descent to hades bore the spirits of the saints up to the eternal heaven the abode of the glorified after the resurrection. From that view we dissent. We do suppose

1. That after Christ came, and even as his advent was drawing nigh, it began to be perceived that in the sphere of the disembodied there were not merely indiscriminate darkness and silence, but a paradise of real, yet incomplete bliss. Hence hades is in the New Testament, though really inclusive of the whole, yet usually applied only to the woful side of the spirit domain; just as the name America, though inclusive of the whole continent, is often applied to the United States alone. Usually, we say; yet probably in Acts 2:27 hades includes both.

2 . That paradise is the name of the blessed side of the spirit-world until the second advent. Then, as death and hades will be merged in the lake of fire, (Revelation 20:14,) so paradise will be merged in the final abodes of the blest. Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:2.

3. That after the visit of Christ to hades, the third heaven and paradise were different, and not identical, is plain from 2 Corinthians 12:4, where see notes.