Ephesians 5:14

14. Wherefore Inasmuch as this duty of bringing the darkness to light is imperative, the following call upon those in darkness, sleep, and death, is issued.

He saith Or, as in the margin, it saith. Clarke, after Grotius, plausibly refers the it to light, synonymous with the gospel. But, in all cases of the use of this formula of St. Paul, some reference is made to an Old Testament passage. Alford and Eadie think it a reference to Isaiah 60:1: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” Here are the three thoughts of a condition of darkness, an arising, (according to the best interpretation,) and a consequent illumination from the Jehovah-Messiah. Another opinion, as old as Theodoret, is, that the three clauses are three lines of an early Christian hymn:

Awake, thou that sleepest,

And arise from the dead,

And Christ shall give thee light.

Both the rhythm and the poetic imagery confirm the supposition that we have here one of the earliest fragments of Christian hymnology. With great plausibility, therefore, Braune blends the two suppositions, that the words are a versified paraphrase of Isaiah’s words. This view, though unsusceptible of demonstration, removes all difficulty. There is no more improbability that St. Paul should quote a paraphrase of Isaiah from an early hymn of the Church than from the Septuagint, as he more than once does.

Awake The concrete darkness which St. Paul’s Ephesians once were (Ephesians 5:8) is now transformed to human beings wrapt in night and darkness. They are lying in what Meyer expressively calls the sin-sleep and the sin-death. A double stratum of slumber and deadness lies upon them, the slumber denoting the indifference, and the death the moral incapability of depraved man to arouse himself into holiness and salvation. For the sin-sleep there is an awake; for the sin-death, there is an arise, a resurrection. For, with the call and in the call a power is imparted. Each dead man may revive; each sleeper may awake, if he desires and wills the bliss of life. All are alike called; and it is the free obedience of man that renders the call “effectual.”

Light The gracious light by which they themselves may become light, and walk fearlessly in the full light of the literal day.